Penance
by SgtMac
Summary: Ten years ago, Regina was kidnapped by the Home Office, and put through three years of torture. When she finally returns home, she's been dramatically changed - both mentally and physically. With the HO threatening to return for her, it will be the ties she has to her son and the rest of her family that will keep her strong. Pre SQ/ Henry-Regina, Regina-Snow. Post Ep 2x20.
1. Prologue

**A/N:** This story has been going around Tumblr for a few weeks under the name of **_REGINA TORTURE THINGEE_**. This prologue has been written so as to finish the conversion of the story from a drabble into a full fic. Word of warning, it's extremely dark and will deal with some very ugly topics such as torture and the horrifying things that much fall under that umbrella. Up to chapter 7 is already available on Tumblr, and will be edited and posted here. There will be changes along the way to ensure consistency and theme. Once we are up to date, chapter 8 will be added.

Warnings for each specific chapter will be included in each chapter.

WARNINGS: Torture, violence, language, alcoholism, a major character death, and grief.

* * *

**-PROLOGUE-**

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE – MAY, 2013**

There are muddy tire tracks leading away from the Cannery, and that's their first sign that whatever they discover inside of it probably isn't going to be what they want to find. She lifts her phone up, and speaks softly into it, her eyes on Neal the whole time. "How's Mary-Margaret?" she asks.

"She hurts and she wants to throw up," David replies. "But she's holding up. We're on the opposite side of the building so whenever you're ready."

"Right," Emma replies, her eyes on the tracks. They look to her like a bigger vehicle made them. Perhaps a van. Considering that none of the rescue party had seen it come or go, it's likely it's long gone now.

"What's wrong?" David asks after several long moments of silence.

"There was a car here already. A truck or a van or something."

"So she might not be inside, anyway," David sighs. "Hang on." There's a shuffling sound as he drops the phone down and away from his mouth.

"What's going on?" Neal queries, frowning as he stares at the door that leads inside the Cannery. He's still trying to process the idea that his fiancée might be somehow tied into this mess, and though he's vehemently denied the suggestion every time that it's been brought up, there's something about Emma's certainty that sways him.

"He's asking my mother if she still feels the connection to Regina."

He nods. Then, "Mind if I ask why we care what happens to Regina? She tried to kill everyone - us - just a few weeks ago."

"It's more complicated than that, Neal. I won't defend what Regina did and what she's done. She is a lot of things, some of them very bad, but in the end, the most important one - the only one that actually matters to be right now - is that she's Henry's mother, and he loves her. She was there when we weren't," Emma shrugs. "I gave him up and you gave us up."

"It wasn't like that," he protests. "I didn't know."

"You shouldn't have needed to."

He swallows hard. "I know." He gazes back at the door, and then sighs.

"What?"

"I don't know what I'll do if you're right." He shakes his head in dismay.

"Whatever happens, we'll figure it out, okay?" she assures him.

"Together?"

"There's no us together," she tells him. "But I don't want you hurt so for your sake, I really hope I'm wrong about this. For Regina's sake, too."

"What's your relationship with her? Are you guys friends?"

"No, definitely not," Emma chuckles. She pauses for a moment to listen to the muffled voices coming from the other side of the phone, and then follows up with, "Most of the time we're at war with each other, but I think we get each other, and in the end, what we're always fighting over is the fact that both love the same kid more than anything."

Neal opens his mouth to answer that, but gets halted by Emma holding up her finger to pause him. She indicates towards the phone as if to suggest that David is speaking to her again. He nods, and just waits.

"She said she's only feeling slight sensations from Regina now," David says suddenly, his voice breaking up. "Whatever Gold gave her, it's starting to wear off. She can tell that Regina is in pain, but not a lot more."

"Well then I think it's time we stop focusing on feelings and get down to the action," Emma tells him. "You took the back, we have the front."

"Right. Be careful, Emma. Please."

"You, too." She hangs up the cell, jams it into her pocket and then nods at Neal. She sees him take a breath. "Hey," she says. "It's going to be okay."

"Okay," he agrees, and then pushes the door open. He lets her step in front of him – not like she asks for permission, and besides, she has the gun – and then he follows behind her as they move through the dark damp building which smells horribly of dead fish. He thinks that it might be a long while before he has the urge for any kind of seafood after this.

"Neal," Emma whispers. "I think there's some kind of foreman's office or something like that up there," she says, gesturing with her empty hand.

"You know, horror movies start like this," he grumbles.

"Have a lot of time for those did you?" she shoots back.

"When you're an idiot who lets the woman they love go, actually yes."

She shoots him a look meant to tell him that this is neither the time nor place for this conversation, and thankfully, he nods his acceptance of this.

"I don't see anyone in there," he says instead.

"We should still check it out just in case," she insists as she starts moving towards the little office before he has a chance to argue. She hears him grunt in protest but then he's right behind her, his fingers wrapped around a metal length of pipe that he'd found on the ground.

It's when they reach the office and look inside the window that she feels an icy cold chill go through her blood. Inside of the little room is an empty metal gurney with thick brown restraining straps drooping down from it, an old looking machine with massive dials and levels on it that reminds Emma of something out of – yes – a bad horror movie and several wires with tiny little suction cups on the end of them.

"What is this?" Emma queries as they move to stand behind the gurney.

"Electrocution," Neal explains, his voice grim. "Jesus."

"Are you sure?" She asks as she lifts one of the restraining straps. It's slightly bent as if to suggest that someone had been surging against it.

"Yeah. I…well, it doesn't really matter why or how, but I got pretty well acquainted with some of the terrible ways that this world fucks over people once I returned here from Neverland. Thankfully, I never had the pleasure of having to experience this stuff myself, but yeah, that machine there is meant to electrocute someone. To torture them, basically."

Emma lets his words and their awful implications wash over her like ice-cold water. Finally, her voice low and trembling, "Okay fine, this explains what Mary Margaret felt, but where the hell is Regina now?"

"Dead," a man's voice replies from the doorway. "I killed her."

"Greg?" Emma snaps as she and Neal turn to face the mysterious outsider who'd swept into all of their lives week earlier.

"She should have let me die when I crashed on my way into town," he chuckles as he aims a gun at the two of them. "But you didn't, and she did and now you will. It's nothing personal. Well, I mean it was with her, but you two, it's about the mission, you understand, right?"

"I understand that you're completely insane," Emma growls. Her eyes flicker around the room as she tries to find a way to escape; there's an open door behind them, but getting to it will cause both she and Neal to have to completely expose themselves to Greg and Tamara. Then again, right now the only thing separating them from the two lunatics is the metal gurney. If shots start getting fired, someone is going to get hit.

"I'm not insane," he assures her. "I'm just a heartbroken son who wanted vengeance and found a way to get it. I had that right, and I took it."

"Do you feel better now?" Emma demands.

"Actually, I do," he grins. "Knowing how much suffering she will go…" he cuts off, shakes his head and then corrects with, "How much suffering she _did_ go through before she died, well yeah, I feel pretty much like my father was finally avenged. I feel...I feel good."

"Where's Tamara," Neal blurts out, his frustration bleeding through; he has to know if she is part of this. Has to know if he really was so wrong.

"I'm here," she says softly, stepping out from behind Greg, a small pistol settled in her own hand. "I'm sorry that you had to find out this way."

"You lied to me," he yells, his eyes wide. He looks at Emma who is still wearing a look of shock and then back over to Tamara, "I trusted you."

"You'd think by now you'd know better that to do that," Tamara replies gently. "But for what it's worth, Neal, I never…I don't want to hurt you."

"It's worth nothing because now you're planning to kill me, right?"

"I have to. It's the mission."

"This is absurd," Emma states. "What mission?"

"To get rid of magic," Greg replies, seeming giddy. "And today, we did exactly that by killing the Evil Queen. She'll never hurt anyone ever again; you should be thanking me for ridding this world of her evil."

"She had a child, you stupid bastard," Emma tells him, her anger mounting into something explosive. Her finger clenches around the trigger and it takes everything she has not to start firing away.

"And I had a father," he snarls. "One that she took from me."

"Do you really think that killing her makes you better than her?"

"I know that it does," he announces, lifting his chin and staring at her, his blue eyes insane. "I stopped her, and I'm going to stop everyone in this town. Including you. I'm going to put you in the ground next to her."

"You can try," Emma snaps back.

"Enough," Tamara says, her voice calm. "You don't have to explain yourself, Greg. They can't possibly understand." She lifts her gun up, and points it right at Neal. "I am sorry for this; I hope you know that."

"You don't have to do this," he pleads. "Tamara, come on, think about this, please. You loved me at least a little bit, right?"

"As much as you ever loved me," she answers, smiling at Emma. "And I think if I had loved you, that would have bothered me."

And then she fires her gun at the same time that two other shots go off.

It's chaos after that; on the opposite side of the door that Emma had been looking to make her escape through, David is crouched down with Mary Margaret, using the wall as cover as he fires back at Greg and Tamara.

"Emma!" David calls out as he pulls back, just barely missing getting hit by a final bullet being fired from Tamara's gun before Greg grabs her arm, and the two of them turn and flee like the cowards that they are.

"David!" she calls back as she sags to the floor. She can feel Neal's dead weight rested against her body, and there's something wet inside of her clothing, something that smells a lot like blood. "Neal's been hit," she whispers.

"So have you," David notes, seeing blood on the sleeve of her jacket. She can feel Mary Margaret's arms around her, and they're warm and soft, but everything inside of is suddenly so very cold and painful.

"It doesn't matter," Emma whispers as she leans down and presses her mouth to Neal's forehead, her lips warm against his rapidly cooling flesh. She doesn't even need to search for a pulse to know that he's already gone; when Tamara had fired the first shot – directly at Emma's heart – Neal had jumped in the way and taken a bullet to the chest.

Perhaps the stupid fool had seen as it as a form of a redemption or penance or something equally idiotic and unnecessary like that.

All she sees it as is losing another person.

* * *

**BANGOR, MAINE – MAY, 2013**

"You're late," she says coolly, her eyebrow arched as she regards the driver as he steps out of the van, his hands jammed in his pockets and his head appropriately lowered to show the expected amount of reverance. "You were due here two hours ago. What happened?" Before he can even think to answer, she glances towards the van and then continues with, "Is the Queen all right? Were there problems in transit?"

"There were," the driver says. "Her heart stopped about twenty minutes outside of Storybrooke. Don't worry; the doc got it going again."

"Very good." She looks behind her. "Get her moved to the medical bay. She's to be treated with the utmost care. She is royalty, after all." She chuckles when she says this. Then, in a more serious, "Be mindful not to adjust the cuff she has on; in this building, her magic will be available to her again, and we certainly don't' wish to allow the Queen access to it."

"Got it," one of the guards who's been standing by the doorway answers. He and his partner slide around to the door of the van, and then yank it open to reveal Regina's unconscious form. She's on an ambulance gurney now instead of the metal one that she'd been on before, but it's doubtful she cares much about the so-called comfort being offered. She's pale and sweaty, and there are signs of burst blood vessels around her eyes.

"Careful," the doctor who is sitting next to Regina says. "The Queen is quite fragile right now, and it wouldn't take much to inspire another cardiac episode that she might not survive." He moves a stethoscope around, and then stands up. "My dear," he greets as he steps in front of the woman who runs the Home Office. "It's been an entirely too long." He offers her a cocky smile, but she simply stares back at him.

As unimpressed as ever.

He's reminded again that this is a business deal; he'd being handsomely paid to ensure that the Queen had made it here alive, and now he'll be further compensated to help everyone back home believe that she's dead.

Something inside of him feels just the slightest pang of guilt at this; while she certainly deserves to be punished and perhaps even lose her life for all that she has done, and all that she has taken away, he wonders if she deserves the sheer amount of pain that she's about to be forced to endure.

Does anyone?

His head cocks to the side and he watches as the gurney is lifted out of the van. He sees Regina's pain glazed dark eyes open for just the briefest of moments and he wonders if she actually sees him, wonders if she recognizes him as she seems to stare right back at him. But then her head is lolling to the side and she's letting out these unnerving troubled gasps of air as she desperately tries to breathe, and though life and death and all such things have always fascinated him far more than they probably should, he finds himself looking away from her clear agony.

"Does her pain bother you?" his employer asks with a knowing smirk.

He forces a sneer across his lips and then waves his hand dismissively. "Of course not. All I care about is that you keep your promises to me."

"Worry not about that, darling; all of the deals that we've struck will be honored. Now, if we're done speaking of such trivial things, you should be getting back to Storybrooke promptly. Your absence is sure to be noticed if my operatives do as they're supposed to do."

The doctor reacts with surprise. "What are they doing?"

"Killing as many people as they can," she answers with a smile that causes his blood to run cold; even Regina hadn't treated life so carelessly.

"Wait, that wasn't part of –"

"Now you're deciding to be morale, are you, Doctor?" she chides.

"The Queen deserves her fate," he answers, ignoring the part of his mind that is continuing to scream at him that no one deserves the kind of hurt that Regina is about to undergo. "Others in Storybrooke don't."

"Then I'd say you best be getting back there so that you can play hero."

He studies her for a moment, thinking about how he's turning over one monster to another, and wondering if the Queen's way hadn't been better. But what's done is done, and the revenge that he'd sworn he'd have, he now has; whatever else happens here, Regina will never be the same.

"When will I hear from you again?"

"When I need something from you. All of your promised supplies and equipment has been delivered to your lab in Storybrooke, and thus, there should be no further need for communication. At least for now."

"Fine by me," he says. "How do I get back? We're a couple hours away."

She nods to the driver. "Take him to the line of Storybrooke." She smiles at him as she then as her eyes slip over the medal attached to his shirt. "Do be careful, darling," she urges. "We wouldn't that to fall off. I'd hate for you to lose your memory and become your cursed self again."

"That sounds like a threat," the doctor notes, his jaw clenching.

"Hardly. Be well, Doctor." And with that, she turns and walks away.

"Relax, lad," the driver chuckles. "If the Boss had wanted you to be Dr. Whale again, she would have done it herself. She's just playing with you, because she enjoys watching people squirm and shiver. Even allies."

"Right," Victor growls. "Get me back to Storybrooke."

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JUNE 2013**

She's standing in the cemetery, glancing down at the gray tombstone when she hears the squish squish of footsteps coming up behind her. They're uncoordinated and heavy, and it sounds to her like the person fast approaching is at the very least slightly if not completely inebriated.

"Hello, love," she hears and then Hook is standing next to her. He smells terribly, and looks even worse, his hair uncombed and his beard unkempt.

"Hook," she notes. "Where have you been for the last month?"

"Laying low," he says before he lifts a flask up to his lips.

"I buy the low part," Emma states, her tone dry. She reaches for Hook's flask, and then stops immediately, her sore arm sending a shot of pain through her. The bullet wound that she'd suffered in the initial fight with Greg and Tamara is mostly healed now, but her movement is still fairly limited and according to Doctor Whale, likely will be for awhile to come.

She'll heal eventually; Whale had assured her in the most unusually sympathetic tone she'd ever heard from him, but only with time

A perfect analogy for Storybrooke.

"Just rum," he sighs, his eyes following hers.

"Right. Were you looking for me in particular or…"

"No, happened to be wandering by on the way back to my ship, and I saw you here. Over him." He looks down and then, quietly, "I'm sorry."

She snorts derisively. "What are you sorry for? For drinking yourself into a stupor thanks to some pity party while the rest of us were fighting for our lives against the lunatics you teamed up with or you're sorry for…"

"I'm sorry for letting this happen, for letting him die," Hook answers, his voice trembling softly. "I didn't…I didn't even know who he was until after…until I heard he was the first one to get killed. You know, all I wanted was my revenge and I didn't care how that happened, and now it's all lead to the death of Milah's boy and…it wasn't worth it."

"Seems like that's the story of this town. Regina wanted revenge on my mother for not being able to keep her mouth shut, you wanted revenge on Rumple for killing your lover, Greg wanted it on Regina for murdering his father, and no one cared who got caught in between all this hatred. It wasn't worth it for anyone. Greg is dead and Regina…"

She stops when she sees Hook bring the flask to his mouth and take a long drag, his haunted blue eyes admitting entirely too many things.

"Hook, do you know what happened to her?" she asks gently.

"They tortured her," he says.

"We know."

"No, you don't. You think they pumped a little electricity into her and let her die, but that's not how it went down. They took her to the edge of death over and over, and each time she came close to falling over, they pulled her back and then started it all over again. And the scary part, love, is that I'm quite certain that they were capable of some much worse than even that. Whoever their employers were, they are sociopaths."

" I think we figured that out for ourselves over the last several weeks," Emma replies grimly. " Do you know if they killed Regina?"

"They must have," Hook replies, his expression somber and haunted as he considers his own part in her certain death. Yes, she had betrayed him, but horrific lines had been crossed that even had repulsed even a man who had doled out many a terrible punishment during his days on the high seas. "Because no one – not even the Queen – could survive that kind of nightmare," he continues. "That Mendell boy, he was as angry as I've ever been, and he wanted her to hurt as much as he did. And she did."

"We never found a body."

"There's a thousand horrible ways to humiliate someone after they're dead," Hook reminds her, his expression vaguely sickly as he likely considers his own ugly past. "I imagine Mendell found a few of them."

"Right. And that just made this all a little bit worse."

"I'm sorry," Hook tells her. "I tried to walk away when they started doing what they were doing to Regina because that's not what this ever supposed to be about and…I just wanted to avenge Milah. And I _failed_."

"And now? Do you go after Gold? Do we just keep going on this path until everyone has failed at getting at vengeance but everyone else has paid the price for it?" She gestures around the cemetery and then down towards the tombstone. "Neal died protecting me. Please, no more."

"It's over," Hook assures her. "I don't want…I just want her back."

"You have to let her go and you have to live. Someone should."

"I don't know how."

"You're asking the wrong person," Emma replies with a self-depreciating snort. "I'm trying to figure how to help my son through losing the person he loved more than anything else in the world – even if he didn't know it or show it like he should have – and the father he wanted to get to know. I don't know how to do right by him, but I have to try. I'm not cut out to be his only mom, but that's what vengeance has left me with. You?"

"I have a bean," he says.

"You have a bean? As in like –"

"A portal creating one, yes. I think that maybe it's time for me to head back to where I belong. Time to return to the Enchanted Forest. There's nothing for me here. Maybe there never was."

"I think that's a good idea," Emma tells him after a moment. "And maybe help some of the people who actually want to go back. Offer up your ship for the journey. Be a good guy, Hook, and lead these people home."

"You have a lot of faith in me," he muses, his hand slipping into his pocket. She sees him something dark out, but it's hard to make out what it is thanks to how shadowed the cemetary is right now.

"Maybe, but mostly I just think that none of us were meant to be standing in a cemetery drinking away our pain. I have my family, and that's…well that's something. It's time to find something for yourself, too, Hook. It's time to move on and let go and find your happiness." She wrinkles her nose. "And maybe take a shower and get yourself a change of clothes."

He chuckles and then offers her what's probably meant to be a charismatic smile intended to charm her her pants off of her. Because of his intoxication, though, it comes off as mostly rather sleepy and slightly lecherous. "And what if you're my happiness, Swan?"

She snorts. "Probably not going to work out for you, Hook."

"No, probably not," he agrees. "How's the arm? You're favoring it."

"It's better."

"Good." He shuffles his feet and then takes one last hit from his flask before pocketing it and turning to her again. "Do me a favor?"

"Depends?"

He smiles at her wariness. "This favor one isn't for me, Swan; it's for Regina. It's something that I think you need to know, and maybe eventually, your boy does, too."

"Okay," Emma says softly. "Tell me."

He holds up his hook and she sees now that there's a black diamond settled into the loop of it. "The Queen was desperate at the end. She believed that she was going to be abandoned by your parents and that she would lose her son, and she was willing to do something terrible. After they took her, I had a few minutes alone with her, and she told me exactly what her plan had been. And then she told me how to stop them by taking this away from them. This is a trigger that would have destroyed all of Storybrooke and killed everyone inside of it except for Henry."

"Jesus," Emma mutters, unable to hide to disgust.

"She stopped it. She saved everyone."

"I don't understand."

"Greg and Tamara had taken the diamond from her. She asked me to steal it back, and told me how to deactivate it permanently before it could be activated. She believed that she was going to die, and she could have taken everyone - all of her enemies - down with her; your boy would lived, and that's all she cared about, but him not being alone, she cared about that more. Regina did horrible things, and so have I, but when it mattered the most, she loved her son and that what was strongest in her."

"Thank you," Emma says, accepting the black diamond as he drops it into her hands.

Hook nods, and then steps away from her. His eyes drop down to Neal's tombstone one last time and he holds them there for a long moment – his face full of grief and sadness - and then she hears the retreating squish-squish of his boots as he walks across the wet grass of the cemetery.

She stays for a few more minutes, talking to Neal and hoping that somehow, he can hear her. Hoping that he knows that she forgives him.

As she turns to leave, her eyes settle on the Mills Crypt. Regina isn't there – and part of Emma doesn't believe she's dead – but just seeing the building makes her think of how much Henry has lost recently.

Far too much.

"You and I were never friends and I think that most of the time we pretty much hated each other, "Emma says, her eyes on the word MILLS. "But I think we also respected each other underneath of that so I'm going to need your help now. I need you to help me be strong enough for Henry. If you were strong enough to not break with Greg and Tamara after what they did, then I know you can be strong enough for our son. I don't even care if you do it in your typically asshole way, Regina, but he needs you and so do I. So do me a favor, all right? Make sure that you're watching out for us somehow or another." She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, then adds, "And if you are still alive somewhere out there, then hold on because I'll find a way to get you home to your son. I will."

She waits for a response that she knows isn't coming, and then, with a loud sigh of irritation and a resigned chuckle, she turns and heads home.

* * *

**BANGOR, MAINE – NOVEMBER, 2016**

His name is Connor Matthews, and he's already having a pretty damned weird day thanks to spilled coffee on a keyboard, his three year old son biting the dog, and some of the neediest customers on the face of the planet, but absolutely nothing compares to what he sees when he looks up from his cell (hey, he's stopped at a red light) just in time to see a naked woman stumble right into oncoming traffic like she's drunk.

She's small, maybe about five-four or so, and she's almost abnormally thin. She has dark hair, he thinks, but it's cut so strangely close to her scalp that it's hard to be sure. What he call tell, though, is that her eyes (they look brown or black) appear to be glazed over and unfocused.

He doesn't hesitate; he puts his car in park, and jumps out and then races towards the woman just as a truck comes to a hard screeching stop just inches away from slamming into her. The driver is yelling at her, but she seems completely oblivious to him and yeah, she's got to be drunk.

Or high.

Or crazy as hell.

Either way, she's going to get herself killed.

"Hey," he calls out as he approaches her. "Are you all right?" He's already pulling off his jacket, but he does it even faster when he starts to actually see her; this isn't a matter of seeing a naked woman and thinking maybe it's his lucky day because there's little attractive about this lady.

No, the truth is that the closer he get to her, the more he sees the heavy lines of fresh cuts, old scars and dark bruises that wrap every part of her body like someone has been using her skin as a canvas for their paints.

Someone has hurt this woman terribly, and it makes absolutely ill. He thinks of the sweet girl that he loves, and then his mind goes no further than that because if someone ever tried to do what's been done here to her, he would…he doesn't know, but he thinks it'd be awful.

His eyes narrow as he sees purple and blue marks circling around her wrists and ankles that look like they were made with thick ropes. There are deep and shallow cuts across her face, and temple, and yeah, she's definitely dark haired. And though he tries not to look, he can't stop himself from seeing a long red scar that stretches from her left shoulder to the swell of her exposed breast. "Hey," he says again.

She looks up at him and she seems surprised, perhaps even alarmed by his sudden proximity. "Don't," she says. She looks around, then, and it's like something switches on in her brain because she seems to abruptly realize that she's somewhere that she shouldn't be.

Around him, he can feel others gathering, their irritation with her having faded and turned to curiosity as they, too, take in the disturbing damage that has been done to entirely too small body. Someone moves to his side, and whispers that he's called for assistance, and Connor just nods his thanks, and keeps slowly moving towards her, hands out in front of him.

"I'm going to put this over you," Connor tells her as he holds up his jacket so that she can see it. "It's pretty cold out here, and you look like you're freezing," he adds, and that's absolutely the truth – Maine in mid November is absolutely grigid – but this is more about keeping others from staring at her (he doesn't know why he cares, he just does and that's enough) because she's clearly suffered enough already.

He moves closer to her, and he can see the way she tenses in anticipation, her broken body tilted and oddly angled, but still somehow standing up.

It occurs to him that she's expecting him to attack her.

"My name is Connor," he says softly as he gets right up next to her. "And you're going to be okay." When she doesn't protest his closeness more than by continuing to be tense, he slides the jacket over her; he's over six feet tall, and it's a thick winter coat so it falls over her body completely.

"Thank you," she whispers.

He allows a small smile of relief. "Yeah, of course."

Somewhere behind him, he hears the sound of an ambulance. Judging by the way she flinches at the loud noise, it clearly hurts her ears. Or maybe it triggers something in her because she seems to retreat from it like she's afraid. He's vaguely reminded of video he's seen of dogs trained to fight.

"It's okay," he starts to say again as he pulls the sides of the jacket closed around her. He'd like to zip it but he figures the medics will want access to her in case there's some significant damage they need to address,

But then suddenly she's falling to the dirty asphalt of the ground, her unsteady legs having finally given out from beneath her, and it takes everything he has to catch her before she hurts herself even more.

Many years later, when he allows himself to think back on a woman that he knew for all of thirty minutes – and not even knew so much as encountered in the strangest possible way of all – he'll remember the strange burst of relief that had shot through her red-rimmed dark eyes.

"I can see the sky," she says as she lies in his arms staring upwards. "It's so blue." She laughs, and it sounds strangely hysterical, oddly completely out of character for this woman, and he hasn't the foggiest clue as to why that is considering he doesn't know her at all.

"Yeah," he agrees, looking over at the EMTs as they approach. "It's a beautiful day." He stands up and moves out of the way as the paramedics take over, each of them saying ugly sounding medical words.

He hears one of the medics ask her for her name, and the haunted look she responds with chills his blood. "I don't have one," she responds dully before her eyes roll backwards and she collapses into unconsciousness.

He doesn't ask for his jacket back.

* * *

**NOVEMBER, 2016 – STORYBROOKE, MAINE**

He's just a hair over fifteen years old, and he's entirely too tall, lean and gawky these days, but as Henry Mills stands in front of the full-length mirror in his bedroom (one of his mother's favorite ones), smiling just slightly at his reflection, he can't help but be appreciative of what he sees looking back at him. He's in a charcoal colored suit and a green tie, and he thinks to himself that right now, he looks pretty damned good indeed.

"So do we have the talk now?" Emma teases as she steps into the room.

"Please, no," Henry laughs as she approaches and gazes at his tie. He can tell that she's wondering if she should call Snow or David for help so he rests a hand on her forearm. "Don't worry," he tells her gently. "I got this. I think I was three when mom showed me how to tie one of these.

"I'm getting better with them," she tells him.

"You are," he agrees. "Last time you only choked me for ten seconds."

"You really are a little shit," she tells him. "But you're a handsome one."

"Yes, I am," he grins. It falls away for a moment, though, and his eyes track back to the mirror. "My first date at my first high school dance," he says with a wistful sigh. "I keep expecting her to come into the room and start brushing lint off my jacket and fussing like crazy. Stupid, right? I mean it's been over three years now. I know she's not coming back."

"It's not stupid to miss your mom, kid."

"But it _is_ stupid to keep hoping she's alive when we know she's not."

Emma pauses for a moment. Everyone has been telling her that she needs to start moving Henry down the path of letting go and accepting Regina's death, but it seems strange to her that in a town that has rebuilt itself numerous times on the very idea of having hope, that should be asked to tear the last bit of it away from Henry. Maybe it's the right thing to do as an adult, but as his mother, she can't do that to him and won't.

"You'll know when it's time to stop believing, Henry. Until then, follow your heart and I believe in whatever it believes," Emma replies. "And what I believe right now is that Regina would think what I think, which is that you are the most handsome man in Storybrooke, and Anna is going to be blown away." She wrinkles her nose. "Not too much, though."

"Was that a sex joke?" he asks.

She groans. "No. Yes. I'm just saying, I know how things can get."

"And I'm just saying chill. I'm a good boy who knows better, and I'm going to be a gentleman tonight," Henry assures her. "Don't worry."

"I'm not. I don't. Not about you. Not about her. I just…"

"Want to make sure I'm prepared for everything. Be calm, Ma, I am."

"Yeah, all right, fine. You sure you don't want me to do your tie."

"I'm sure."

"Okay. Curfew at eleven. I'm working late, but if you need anything…"

"I won't, but if I do, I'll call."

She nods, smiles at him once more, and then starts from the room before coming to a stop. "Kid, I don't know if your mom is alive out there somewhere or not, but what I do know is that she loved you more than anything in this world or any other, and she'd be so damned proud of the man you're becoming. She's be over the moon at seeing you like this."

"Then take a picture."

"What?"

"For her." He shrugs his shoulders like it doesn't mean as much as it clearly does to him. "In case she _is_ out there. Because if she is, then we both know that someone is keeping her from coming back, but I know my mom, and she'll find her way to me whatever it takes. However long it takes. So yeah, when she comes home, I want her to see today."

"Okay," Emma nods. She pulls her cell from her pocket. "Smile." She laughs when he gives her his best player grin, something that looks like he's trying to seduce her. "Like she's your mother, jerk." And that does the trick; his smile softens into something wistful and lovely.

She looks at the picture and nods.

"Good?" he asks.

"Perfect," she confirms. "And for what it's worth, kid, I love you more than anything in this world or any other, too. And I'm just as proud."

"I know," he tells, a bright smile on his face. "Now get out of here, I got to finish getting ready to make a grand entrance. Because you know that I have to." He wiggles his eyebrows. "I am the Queen's son, after all."

"I know," she drawls. She shakes her head in amusement, and then turns and leaves his bedroom, shutting the door quietly behind her.

* * *

**BANGOR, MAINE (ST. JOHN'S HOSPITAL) – MARCH, 2017**

She's in the middle of a particularly frustrating therapy session (the movement in her leg remains poor and the pain severe enough to require a nearly constant stream of narcotics in addition to the use of that awful cane) when a blinding headache suddenly overtakes her – thanks to an explosive fit of rage that had seemed to come from somewhere deep within her chest - and when it finally eases back and she can see again, she finds herself able to remember her own name for the first time since she'd woken up in a hospital room a few days before Christmas.

Since then, everyone has been calling her Jane; it's a name she doesn't much care for, but until now, she's never quite understood why.

The answer is simple, of course; Jane is a commoner's name. It's so very

_And you are a Queen, Regina._

Mother, she realizes, and then quickly retreats from the other memories. Though she doesn't know exactly - or even vaguely - why yet, she knows that these are ones that she doesn't actually want back.

She feels the doctor's hand settle on her shoulder, and she can hear him asking her if she's okay. He keeps saying the name Jane over and over.

"Regina," she whispers, looking up at him with tears in her eyes.

"What?"

"My name is Regina. Regina Mills."

"You remember?"

"My name," she says again. "I remember my name."

"Okay, Regina, that's...that's great," he replies, and he's smiling so widely because he thinks that this is a major step for her on the road to recovery for her. He thinks this is the way back home, and that this is progress.

She knows the truth, though; some things are better left forgotten.

And being Regina Mills once again – and remembering who she was (right now, it's more vague sensations and emotions than actual distinct memories, but she can feel the dread as though it's tangible) isn't hope.

It's a nightmare.

Hers.

And now, she's returned to it.

**TBC…**

**For anyone interested, I can be found on Tumblr at sgtmac7**


	2. 1

**A/N: **Thanks for the kind words. This is a bit shorter, but it sets the stage for what's to come.

Warnings: None really for this chapter besides a wee bit of sadness.

_Enjoy!_

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE – JANUARY, 2023**

She's sitting at the round kitchen table grading (well, she's mostly playing connect the dots with red ink) ninth grade history essays when her husband steps through the front door, snowflakes on the shoulders of his heavy winter jacket and a thick stack of envelopes in his hands. He's frowning rather intensely as he looks down at them, the soft lines around his bright blue eyes deeper than usual. His thumb runs absently across the white paper of one of the letters, and even if she didn't know this man as well as she does, Snow would know that something is bothering him deeply right about now.

"David," she prompts as she puts down her red pen. Though she still has another dozen or so papers to review, this break is probably for the best considering just how poor of a grasp on history most of these kids have.

This world's history or the old one's.

She's pretty damned sure one of the kids just claimed that Christopher Columbus and Abe Lincoln discovered Wonderland while smoking peyote together.

So, yeah, a few minutes away from grading is more welcomed.

Then again, though, judging by the pensive look on David's face, perhaps not.

"What's wrong?" she pushes as she stands up to move towards him. Her arm loops gently around his waist.

"Mail's here," he tells her, his voice quiet. After a moment of hesitation, he almost reluctantly offers his wife the thick bundle of envelopes, gesturing to the one on top. "There's one addressed to you in there," he comments, his brow furrowing again. "The real you, I mean."

Without him having to explain, she knows why this worries him: while people in Storybrooke have finally - eleven years after the curse was broken – returned to calling her Snow, all of the legal correspondence that she receives is still addressed to Mary Margaret Nolan.

She slowly takes the stack from him, and then looks down at the one that he was pointing to – a plain white envelope that simply reads: SNOW.

Somehow, without even opening it, she knows exactly whom it's from.

She looks up at him. "It's been ten years," she says softly, her eyes wide. "You really think it's her?" he asks, swallowing hard.

"We never found her body," she reminds her husband unnecessarily.

"I know," he says, and he does. Of course he does. Because though everyone has preached moving on from Regina's disappearance and the pain that had followed it until they're each blue in the face, none of those who had actually known her ever really had moved on or let go.

Instead, Regina had remained this strange rarely talked about ghost that had walked the imagination of everyone Storybrooke, someone that they'd always looked for whenever there'd been the slightest amount of craziness; any time there felt there were unpredictably winds sliding through town, Snow had wondered if Regina had been nearby.

And over the years, she'd been unable to stop herself from hoping time and time again that one of these days, she might even be right.

Snow nods, and then looks back down at the envelope. There's no return address on it and her name is the only thing printed - in deep pressed in blue ink - on the white paper. The handwriting is in neat block style, and not at all like that which her former stepmother had been taught to favor.

No, Regina had utilized a fancier and more elegant kind of penmanship.

A Queen's sophisticated and well trained hand, as it were.

Still, even though the handwriting is completely wrong for Regina, Show feels it deep down in her gut; she knows exactly whom this letter is from.

Ten years ago, Regina had disappeared into thin air. She'd been believed dead because the one person who had been with her while she'd been being tortured – Captain Hook – had been certain that she'd gone through too much to survive. Still, for Henry and for her mother though Snow had never requested it, Emma had searched relentlessly for Regina.

For over two years, Emma had called in every favor that had ever been owed to her from her bail bondswoman days and pulled on every tony string she had been able to find to try to disciver where Regina might have disappeared to. She'd been insistent that the van tracks that she'd seen at the Cannery the night everything had gone bad had to have meant something; why drive Regina off just to bury her body in the woods?

Still, each lead had come up empty, and they'd all had to turn to the desk of ensuring that Henry Mills had grown up safe, loved and happy.

Snow likes to think that as a family, they've done a good job of that.

All the same, though, Snow has never forgotten the woman whose life has tangled so completely with her own from the very moment that their manipulated first meeting had occurred on a beautiful green hillside.

She finds it impossible to forget Regina or the impact – both good (Regina had taught her about love) and bad (Regina had taught her about hate) that her former stepmother had made on her life as she drives down the street where the mansion still sits.

It's unimaginable for her not to think about Regina when she looks at twenty-two year old Henry home from college in Boston, his wit so very sharp like his mother's. He's a fairly happy boy with a big smile, but sometimes she sees the past in his green eyes, and she knows that there's a reason that he doesn't come back home all that often.

Maybe it's the apple trees that seem to grow along every street.

"Are you going to open it?" David asks gently. Then, as if remembering how invested their daughter is in all of this, "Should I call Emma?"

"No, not yet," Snow replies. "But could you make me some tea?"

"Of course." She hears rather than sees him slide over to the kitchen area; they're still in the loft that they'd lived together in ten years ago. Emma has long since moved out, and she now owns a two-bedroom townhouse near the sheriff's station so this place is more than adequate for them.

With a sigh, Snow unseals the letter, all the while trying to control the rapid hammering in her heart. She has no idea what Regina might be about to say in this letter, but she thinks that if this is some kind of threat, it's a rather unspectacular one considering their rather dramatic past.

The first line of the letter, though, well it changes everything.

_I'm sorry, Snow._

She blinks and swallows and then licks her lips. She feels David come up behind her, the cup of tea appearing next to her hand. He leans just slightly over so that he can read the letter, too, and she adjusts her shoulder to make it easier on him. This is between she and Regina, of course, but David is her rock, and with that kind of opening, she has a damned good feeling that she's going to need him tonight.

She takes a breath, a sip from the tea and then keeps reading.

_I know that it has been a very long time, and I'm quite certain that seeing this letter from now is something of a terrible surprise. You're probably already skimming through looking for the grand threat, I would imagine, and though I am loathe to admit it, you are justified in doing so._

_That said, fear not, dear, this letter isn't about that at all. I have no desire to cause you or anyone else pain or suffering. Simply put, this is an apology, and I hope you're willing to hear me out even if I ill deserve it._

_Ten years ago, as you're well aware, I was kidnapped by agents from an organization that calls themselves the Home Office. They are an anti-magic group of sadistic thugs that use rather radical interrogation and torture methods to steal and destroy anything that they don't understand._

_That was me. I was their Holy Grail of magic. I put myself into the situation with my own pride and arrogance, and they were there to allow me to fall to the deepest depths of hell possible. Suffice it to say, what I've gone through thanks to them…well, I suppose that doesn't really matter; this isn't about that. This is about us and this is about Henry. _

_Since escaping from their imprisonment a few years ago, I've been living in Bangor. Not willingly, at first, though. I was badly injured and was in the hospital for quite a length of time. I tell you this not to gain sympathy, but so that you understand why I seemingly abandoned the child that I love more than anything. In the beginning, I simply could not do much more than fight my way through various physical therapy appointment._

_After I was finally able to leave the hospital and resume having some semblance of a life, though, I found that I had limitations that made it so that attempting to return to Storybrooke would have been foolish. I missed - miss - my son dearly, but I wasn't willing to put him in the position of having to take care of me. That's not what a child should do._

_Even then, though, my initial plan was always to return to Storybrooke – and to Henry - once I felt like I was strong enough to do so, but with each day and each month and each year that passed, I came up with a new creative reason – some of them valid, and some of them the absurdity of a coward who doesn't realize that they are one - not to be a burden to a son whom I was quite certain had already happily moved on from me. _

_What made it easier was that for the longest time, I couldn't remember where to return to. You see, aside from my physical limitations, I had some memory loss, and trying to convince doctors that I needed to return to a town that doesn't exist wasn't exactly helping me to sound sane._

_But then, Snow, I think we both know that sanity has never been my best friend, anyway. I'm not sure that I fully realized how truly disconnected from reality I had become until I foolishly started trying to convince my psychiatrist of who I was and he told me that if I was indeed that person - the Evil Queen that I claimed to be - that I'd have been locked up for life._

_She's right. I knew it the moment she said it._

_That was when I decided that I wasn't ever coming home._

_So many years have passed since that horrible day and I suppose that you could say that I've lived as well as I can manage. I think if not for a recent trip to Boston for work reasons (so much for being the mayor, I tend books to pay the bills now), you wouldn't be seeing this letter at all._

_But I did make that trip to Boston and while I was eating lunch at an outdoor cafe, I saw a twenty-two year old boy (if my memory is correct and these days it sometimes is, he would have just recently turned that) waiting tables. He had an impish smile, messy brown hair and your daughter's green eyes, but the posture that I always demanded of him._

_Snow, I saw my Henry._

_He didn't see me, but I wanted him to._

_I couldn't allow him, too, though._

_I didn't know what I'd say if he recognized me. _

_I didn't what I'd do if he didn't. _

_So I got up, paid my bill and left before he came over to pick up my plate. I watched him the rest of the afternoon, and then I forced myself to get in a taxi and go to the airport so that I could return to my apartment. I knew if I didn't, if I dared to stayed around, I couldn't stay away from him._

_I've tried so very hard to be strong enough to stay away from him since I saw him in Boston. I have tried to tell myself that he has a very good life now, and doesn't need or want me back in it, but all I think about these day is him now. I want to hold him and touch him. I miss him. _

_Snow, I want my son to see me again. _

_I know that after everything that has happened between us - and I have had so much time to think about the mistakes that I've made and the people that should have been truly blamed and weren't - that I don't deserve your help in this, but I miss my baby boy. _

_After I returned home, I tried to find Henry on the Internet, but his name came up empty. I assume that this is something Emma did to protect him from those who might know of his bloodline. What this means, though, is that my only chance of seeing him is through your mercy._

_Make no mistake, Snow, though I not the same woman that I was before, I still have my pride. I come to you with an honest heartfelt apology for the nightmare of our shared pasts, but I won't grovel. I've been on my knees too many times in my life, and even for this, I will not be there again._

_I hope that you understand - mother to mother - that I miss my son, and if he's so willing, I would like to speak to him again, even if only for a few minutes. I have no more desire to force myself on him than I did a few years ago; I promise you - and Emma, if it matters to her - that I won't be trying to take him away from anyone. Those days are over for all of us. _

_The choice is yours and his, and my information is on the business card enclosed. I'll understand if you don't respond, but I hope that you will._

_I'm tired, Snow; I miss my family and I miss my home._

_And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

Snow gasps as she completes the letter. It's not signed, but it doesn't need to be. Her eyes are filled with tears as she folds it up and then unfolds it.

"Snow?" David says softly, his hand now in hers.

"Call Emma," she tells him.

"Are you sure?"

"Ten years, David," Snow responds. "Ten years that she's been hurting and away and…and it's time for Henry to have his mother back."

"She's different," he says. "The Regina we knew would never have written this kind of letter."

"I know," Snow replies. "And that's what scares me about all of this, David. What did she go through? What did they do to her?"

"I'm guessing we're about to find out."

She nods her head solemnly, and then says again, "Call Emma."

**TBC...**

* * *

**Just a reminder, the first 7 chapters of this (unedited) can be found on Tumblr at sgtmac7 (but you might want to wait because I like to think it'll be even better here than it was there :D )**


	3. 2

**A/N: **Continued gratitude for the warm reception that has gotten. I am trying to do my best to get the first seven chapters which are already written edited and up quickly, but I can't promise one a day. I'll try.

Warnings: For this chapter, not really.

_Enjoy!_

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

It's just after four in the afternoon, and she's standing in the middle of the park, a gray and blue beanie on her head, and a thick parka wrapped around her. Her green eyes are focused with frightening intensity on the strange symbols that have been splashed in bright red spray-paint across every available surface in this typically sedate little part of Storybrooke. Little asshole delinquents, she imagines, and there was a time when she'd been one of them, but those years are far behind her now, and mostly, Emma's just irritated because this is going to cause her a lot of paperwork.

What's even more annoying to her, though, is the fact that these strange symbols have been popping up all over town for the last few days, and she has no idea why. Which irks the shit out of her. It's probably just a bunch of idiot kids being idiots, but if it's something more than that and Storybrooke is developing some kind of fairytale kid gang problem, she's going to be incredibly pissed off about it.

Her phone rings and she glares down at the sound for a moment before shoving her gloved hands into her pocket, and after some degree of fumbling thanks to cold fingers, finally manages to answer it. "Yeah?"

"Hey," David says softly, and immediately Emma knows that something is wrong. It's his wary tone and his unusual hesitance, and well she's a lot like her father, and neither one of them tend be very cautious.

A bull in a china shop is a more accurate way of describing both of them.

"Is everything all right?" she asks while he searches for words. "Is –"

"Your mom is fine and I'm fine and Henry is fine," he replies immediately because he understands the need to verify the safety of family first. Which brings him back to the whole reason for the call. He sighs. "But something has happened. You really need to get over here as soon as you can. There's something that you need to see, and no, it can't wait until this evening."

"Okay," Emma replies. "I'll wrap up here and be on my way."

"Good."

"Everyone is okay, right?" she pushes again.

"We're okay," he replies, and she knows a dodge when she hears one.

* * *

"All right, what's going on now?" Emma demands as she rushes through the front door of the loft. At almost forty years of age, the sheriff is a little bit less spry than she used to be, but she's still lean and tall, and still she carries herself in the same defiant way that she always has. To this day, she still hasn't quite accepted her role as the Savior, but she fights being the daughter Snow White and Princess Charming a whole lot less now.

They're her parents, and she's proud of them and she's proud of her family.

David offers her the smallest of smiles. He's sitting on the couch with Snow, an arm looped gently around her waist. "Hello to you, too." He comments before standing up and crossing over to the bar. He picks up a sheet of white paper off the counter, and then thrusts the letter into her hands.

"Read it," Snow says after a few seconds have passed.

Hearing the urgency in Snow's voice, she doesn't bother arguing with her. Instead, She drops down her head and starts doing exactly that, emotions rapidly playing across her face as she takes in the words printed neatly onto the paper. Words from a woman she'd thought long dead. After a moment, she looks up at David and then flicks her gaze over towards Snow, her eyes wide and a question sitting on her lips.

David nods his head in the affirmative. "It's her."

"Regina's alive," Emma murmurs. "I'd given up. He told me that he'd finally given up, too."

"Well now he doesn't need to," Snow says, making it clear what her answer to Regina's question will be. "I want to bury the past, Emma," her mother practically gushes out. "I want to bring Regina home, and make our family whole."

"Yeah," Emma agrees. "It's time. Henry is going to be…wow."

"He's going to be ecstatic," David concurs. He gestures to the letter again. "But I think we should see her before Henry does. Maybe I'm reading that wrong, but it sounds like she might not quite...look like she used to."

"You think she's got some kind of permanent damage," Emma notes, her eyes scanning back to the lines where Regina had mentioned limitations. It certainly suggests that there had been damage, and the very fact that the Home Office had kept her captive for as long as they had reinforces that thought to her in a way that makes her stomach do a brutal flip-flop.

"I don't know, but if she does, we should know about it in advance so that we can prepare Henry. He may have told you that he'd given up, but -"

"But I think we all know that he never did," Emma replies with a smile and wry chuckle of bemusement. "I guess I'm taking a drive to Bangor."

* * *

**BANGOR, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

The address listed on the business card (one that rather blandly reads MILLS ACCOUNTING) that Regina had put in the envelope leads Emma to a small condominium complex in the heart of Bangor. Her specific unit appears to be on the bottom floor (which seems strange to Emma because she'd have thought Regina would prefer the safety of being higher up) and it's clearly upper-scale. The doorman just stares at her when she tries to beg and plead her way in. Finally, with an agitated sigh that she doesn't hide well at all, she agrees to let him check to see if the "Ms. Mills is up for visitors today".

A strange statement and one that immediately sets Emma on edge.

"Tell her it's Emma Swan," she tells him as he lifts up the phone and brings it to his ear, all the while wondering if such an announcement will get her an invite inside or a quite denial. Neither would surprise her at this point.

After a moment on the phone - presumably with Regina, the doorman nods. "All right, apparently you're good, Miss Swan. Hers is the second door on the left. You can't miss it since there's only two condos down that way."

"Thanks," Emma says, and then, because she never really was good at just accepting what's been given to her without asking for more, "It's been a very long time since I've seen…my friend. Is there anything I should know?"

He chuckles. "Nothing that's my place to say. If you'll excuse me." And with that, he turns his back on her, and moves to assist someone else who has come to the door. If he notices her staring at his back, he doesn't show it.

Swallowing her irritation and the growing trepidation she feels in her gut, Emma finally makes her way down the long hallway. Once she reaches the plain white door marked 103, she takes a deep breath and then she knocks.

There's a brief pause - one where she's quite sure that Regina won't open the door to her, and then suddenly, it does open, and the former Mayor of Storybrooke, former Evil Queen of the Enchanted Forest is standing in front of her, smiling thinly at her. "Miss Swan," Regina rumbles, and damned if there isn't a hint of what almost sounds like familiar affection there.

"Regina," she replies, her eyes sweeping rapidly over the older woman.

Regina is about six years older than her, in her early to mid forties (she'd be about 44, Emma believes, though she's not exactly sure), and though her posture isn't nearly as straight and she looks far from the imposing leader of before, there's still something indescribably undeniably regal about her.

That is until Emma sees the cane rested uncomfortably in her hand. And that is until she sees the way that Regina leans heavily on the cane simply so that she can step out of the way and let her former enemy into her condo.

"I take it Snow received my letter."

"She did."

"Good. I wasn't sure…well." Regina nods as she limps her way over to the couch and sits down. She gestures to Emma to join her. "Please." Then, as if remembering her manners, "Would you like something to drink, dear?"

"No, I'm good for now." Emma replies as she seats herself just a few inches away from where Regina is on the astoundingly comfortable sofa. Once settled there, the sheriff finds herself suddenly unable to stop herself from blurting out, "What the hell happened to you? How did you get hurt?"

She's greeted with a sharply lifted eyebrow from the former queen, and she almost sighs in relief because it means that despite whatever injuries Regina might have suffered during her captivity, the snarky sassy spicy woman who'd infuriated her is still in there. Amazing how much she's missed that.

"Still as tactful as always, I see, Sheriff."

Emma shrugs unapologetically. "Sorry. How about, how are you?"

"I'm fine, dear. As for what happened, well those idiots found a few unique ways to torture me over the three years that I was their guest. The ironic part is that I think that the boy who originally kidnapped me –"

"Greg Mendell?"

"I knew him as Owen Flynn, but yes. I think he would have killed me quickly; he was in it for pain and revenge. The Home Office, though; well, I was lab rat to them and they wanted to see..." she shakes her head and then waves her hand dismissively. "I survived, and in the end, that's all that matters."

"But you have nerve damage, I take it."

"Significant nerve damage," Regina corrects. "Enough where some days my body doesn't work as it should. Humiliating, but again, I survived."

"Yeah, you did," Emma nods. "So, now what?"

"You tell me," Regina replies. "Why are you here?"

"Because my mother received your letter."

"But why are you here, Emma?"

"People still can't leave town. Well except for me and Henry."

Regina frowns deeply. "I have a feeling that I should understand exactly what you're referring to, but, I'm afraid that there's much locked away inside my mind. All to say, dear, you'll have to explain what you mean."

"After the curse broke, we found out that anyone who crossed the town line would revert back to their cursed personalities. Gold had a way for people to get outside when they absolutely must, but it's risky and not used very often because if something were to go wrong, they'd be stuck outside."

"Ah. I see."

"Memory loss?" Emma prompts, forcing herself not to contort her face; she knows that the last thing Regina needs right now is pity. This woman in front of her clearly isn't the Regina from ten years ago, but her pride is still strong.

"Some." She lifts her head. "So you're here because Snow sent you?"

"Yes and no. My mother wants you home, but I do as well." She laughs humorlessly. "You know, I searched everywhere for you for a couple of years, but I kept coming up empty, and every time I had to tell Henry that I'd failed him again, his heart broke a bit more. He's a strong kid because he's ours, but...we he needs you, Regina. He needs his mom."

"How is he?"

"You saw him," Emma notes with a smirk.

"For a few minutes. Waiting tables. Why is he doing that?"

"You mean because of the trust fund you had set up for him?" Emma shrugs. "That's where he's my kid. He wants to do everything himself, and that means paying for whatever he can. Right now it's just his apartment there, but he's an independent kid, Regina; he doesn't mind a little work."

"Is he happy?"

"I think so."

Regina smiles at that. "Good," she says. Then, the joy falling away into something terribly sad and heartbroken, she says, "Then maybe I shouldn't –"

"However happy he is doesn't change the fact that Henry misses you like crazy, Regina," Emma tells her. "He's never given up hope that we'd find you one day, and now we have. There's no chance – no way – that I'm not bringing you home. Not unless you really don't want to go. And I think we both know that you do so how about you pack a bag, I grab a soda and then we hit the road and head back to Storybrooke. And our son."

"So much has changed," Regina muses, her hands coming together atop the cane in a way that reminds Emma uncomfortably of Mr. Gold.

"Yeah," Emma agrees. Then, smiling. "But you're still a pain in the ass."

That earns her a short bark of laughter. "So I am, dear. So I am."

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

The drive back to Storybrooke is quiet, but that's mostly because Regina sleeps through most of it thanks to the painkiller she takes before she gets into the car; long drives hurt her badly, and she doesn't want to look weak when she sees her son for the first time in ten years. She won't be able to hide the cane or her limp from him, but she'll be damned if she looks frail.

"I know you're probably thinking of grabbing a room at the inn for the night, but why don't you crash at my place instead," Emma offers. "Henry will be in town tomorrow morning; I asked him to come in for a party."

"You have a spare room?"

"I have his room, and I promise you, he'd be fine with you staying in it."

"Very well," Regina allows. Partly because the idea of being so close to the things that had meant - and perhaps still mean - something to her son is so very enticing, and partly because she's already damned sore and tired.

What she gets in return from Emma is a small smile.

An infuriating smile.

The kind that tells her - has always told her - that Emma sees right through her, and knows exactly what she's thinking right now.

* * *

Regina is sound asleep when the car slides over the town line, and though she really should be keeping her eyes on the road, Emma can't help but spare a look over at the uncomfortably dozing former queen. She'd been wondering if the return of magic to her blood after so many years away would cause a reaction – perhaps a sudden awakening – but there's nothing.

So Emma keeps on driving.

* * *

Henry's bedroom is clean enough for a college boy who no longer lives in it, but it looks like the abode of a high school student with schizophrenic interests. There are comic books everywhere, but also video games and a baseball, and a drawing pad and comics and then there are pictures.

Of him standing in the middle of this very room dressed in a charcoal suit and a green tie. He looks like he's about fifteen years, and he's smiling at the camera in a way that feels like he's looking right at someone specific.

There are other pictures, too. Of him with friends and family.

Of him with Emma.

Of him with Regina.

She picks the photo up, pulls it to her breast, crosses over to his bed, drops down onto the soft mattress and then - with watery tears shining bright in her dark eyes - falls asleep with the picture of him against her heart.

* * *

To say that Regina is nervous in the morning would be an understatement.

Her anxiety is off the charts, and for a few frightening moments, this fear causes her brain to short out and everything goes cold and numb and fuzzy.

Frantically, she forces herself to remember her breathing exercises, the same ones that the doctors had urged her to utilize after she'd woken up in the hospital in severe pain and unable to remember her own name.

She takes a pill and then curses herself for the need to do so.

And then she inhales and exhales again. And reminds herself that Henry deserves to see the best part of her after all these years. Not the wrecked and still broken and still terribly lonely and sad part of her that remains.

"Need water?" Emma asks from the doorway, a cup in her hand.

She almost tells the sheriff off, but the look Regina sees there - not pity, but understanding - silences her and she takes the cup of water instead. "I get headaches," she says by way of explanation. "When I get stressed."

"Today is stressful," Emma allows, never one to bullshit anyone with false statements. "But you know what? All Henry is expecting is his mother."

"Do I really look like the mother he remembers?" Regina snaps back, her face reddening with frustration. She gestures angrily towards the cane.

"Actually, yeah, you do. That cane doesn't change who you are to him. Or that you love him and he loves you. Neither do your headaches." Emma says the last word like she understands that the headaches are just a symptom of the overall anxiety, but isn't willing to actually embarrass Regina with the truth of her knowledge. It's enough that they both know she knows.

"When will he be here?"

"He just called from the city limits," Emma replies. "He's going to pick up my parents and then come over. They're expecting breakfast."

"You can cook now?"

"Ah, there's the Madam Mayor I'd missed so much."

"You really missed me, did you, dear?"

"Everyone needs a sparring partner, Regina."

"Well, I suppose that's true enough," Regina chuckles, some of the panic finally sliding away from her. Then, quietly, "So, how do we do this?"

Emma grins. "I say we surprise them."

**TBC...**

* * *

**Another reminder: if you're interested in reading the unedited original 7 chapters for this story a bit early, they can be found on my Tumblr page at sgtmac7**


	4. 3

**A/N:** As always, thank you for the kind words.

Warnings: None besides general angst.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

At just a few months over twenty-two years of age, five-foot-ten Henry Mills is quite the handsome young man now. He's lost almost all of the boyish sharpness in his face, and has instead has taken on the lean build and body of a college student who can never quite stay still. His shaggily cut brown hair is still absurdly messy and uncombed, but his constantly mischievous eyes have brightened up to an almost vivid shade of green.

Right about now, Snow is seeing those bright green eyes turned on her as her grandson grins out at her from the driver's seat of his mother's vintage Mercedes Benz. After Regina had disappeared ten years earlier, the car had been stowed away and for a short while, there had been heated demands from some of the angrier members of the community – Whale and Leroy for example – that perhaps the vehicle should be destroyed so as to remove one of her last remaining symbols from the town, but Emma had insisted that it belonged to Henry, and he should be the one to decide its fate.

And, of course, he'd wanted to keep it so for five long years, the Mercedes had lived a very comfortable life in Michael's Tillman's garage, getting worked on regularly and being driven around Storybrooke every now and again just to keep the engine fresh and lively. Michael, though he'd harbored very little in the way of good feelings towards Regina thanks to her forced separation of him from his family, had treated the car very well because even though his memories of being a mechanic had been implanted by the curse, his strong love of engines apparently had not been. When Henry had turned sixteen, he'd proudly presented him with keys and told him it'd be the best car he'd ever own.

Michael had been absolutely right, and Henry has been driving the Benz since that day, keeping her clean and shiny and running like she's brand new. Emma has always believed that this car was Henry's one tangible remaining tie to his adoptive mother, and making sure that the car was always treated with love and care was his desperate way of trying to make peace with the feelings he had of failing Regina while she'd been alive.

Around, Snow corrects herself, because now she knows the truth.

Now that she knows that Regina is alive, and she knows where Henry is taking them, and what they're going to see. He doesn't yet, of course, and for once, such truth will not come from her.

Though she'd been the one to push the door to Regina's return open, what happens next belongs between mother and son and she won't do anything to ruin anything else for Regina.

Especially not for this reunion.

"Hey, guys," Henry calls out, his hand hovering over the horn. "You about ready to go?"

"Not quite," David says as he comes to the window. "I have to stop by the station for a few minutes and check in on something for your mom – for Emma."

Henry frowns at the strange correction from his grandfather; they're well past the point where there's any degree of discomfort from anyone in relation to Emma's position in his life (she's ma and even lost to him, Regina will always be mom), and to be honest, there's never really been that from David or Snow so the sudden change back to Emma is odd.

But perhaps whatever is happening at the station is distracting him.

"But you'll be by after, right? For whatever surprise party this is?"

"Yeah," David nods, his face lighting up. "Of course." He puts out his hand as if to touch and perhaps ruffle Henry's messy hair, but then stops a few inches away as if forcibly reminding himself that Henry's not a little boy anymore and might not appreciate it as much he once had. The fact that Henry only comes back to Storybrooke every now and again (he agrees with Snow that it's the past that keeps him away) has been hard on everyone, and though David would never admit as much for fear of putting guilt on the boy's shoulders that he ill deserves, he misses his grandson dearly.

"Cool. You ready to fly, Gram?" Henry asks as he sees Snow steps behind David, her arm settling around his waist for a brief moment as she leans up to gently kiss him on his rough cheek. With a knowing smile, Henry nods his head downwards, indicating for Snow to get in. When he'd first received the car, she'd been noticeably hesitant about riding in it because every part of it – the style, the smell and the power of it – had reminded her of Regina. And those memories had turned from angry to confused to just terribly sad.

"I am," she says as she slides inside, sitting atop leather that has been kept in pristine condition. She quickly belts herself in, and then waves at David who turns and heads towards his truck.

"Cool." He puts the car into drive, and starts slowly moving down the street; Emma's townhouse is only a few miles away. "So why the mystery over who this surprise party is for? When ma called, she was being all kinds of cryptic, but she didn't sound upset so I figure nothing is wrong, right?

"Nothing is wrong," Snow assures him. "And I promise, you'll find out everything in just a few minutes." She reaches out and squeezes his hand tightly. "We're really happy you're home," she says. "We missed you."

"I missed you, too," he tells her. "I did."

"I know," she replies with a large watery smile. "And I hope after this weekend, we'll get to see you around more. We'd all like that, Henry."

Clearly unnerved by her words, his eyebrow lifts up in a way that reminds Snow so much of Regina. "You're sure nothing is wrong? Really sure?"

"I am," she laughs. "Drive. The faster you go, the sooner you know."

"Are you telling me to break speed laws?"

"I'm telling you that our sheriff is at home right now and our lead deputy is the station, and I'm telling you that I want to see this surprise as much as you do – well, maybe not as much, but close enough – so, yes, step on it."

He grins, and then does exactly that.

* * *

"Hey, Kid," Emma says as she reaches out pulls him into a fierce bear hug approximately half a second after she's opened the door to him. Behind him, Snow enters, her eyes tracking to her. In turn, Emma flickers her own green ones towards the stairs so as to tell her mother where Regina is. She's pretty sure she hears Snow let out something like a small nervous chuckle and the way she's clutching her hands together in front of her certainly shows off her anxiety.

"Hey," he responds, breaking away after a moment. "So are you going to let me in on what this is all about? Is this party is for Ruby?" he asks. Then, wrinkling his nose. "Tell me that she didn't forgive that son of a bitch because if she did -"

"She didn't and no," Emma responds quickly, before he can get on a rant. "And it's not for Ruby. Actually, to be honest, there's no actual party, either." She offers him a sheepish grin at the end of this because she knows the look that she's about to get – one hundred percent Mills irritation. And oh does she get it, complete with an unimpressed glare. He may be her son biologically, but even after ten years apart, Henry still carries with him so much of Regina.

Almost immediately, though, the glare morphs into a grin. "Wait, are you about to introduce me to someone that's supposed to be my new daddy?" He looks around the kitchen as if scanning for another person that might be hiding behind a wall or a counter. "Because if you are...you know what, at least promise me it's not someone like George."

"Eww. Also, I think he might be related to us."

"He's actually not," Snow assures him. He was your father's twin brother's adoptive father so no, no relation of any kind." She punctuates her words with a cheeky smile towards Emma.

"Yeah, thanks so very much for that genealogy lesson," Emma groans. Then, turning back to Henry. "It's not about a guy, Henry. There's no guy, and I'm not introducing you to anyone new."

"Not anyone new," he repeats with a thoughtful nod. "So someone I already know, then. Are you dating a woman because if you are, that's okay -"

Emma almost growls in frustration. "Wait. Stop a second. I'm not...I'm not dating anyone. Okay, so this is kind of where it gets complicated, and I need you not to freak out, okay? Because there's a lot of story to tell and I know –"

"Henry," a soft rumbling voice says from the doorway.

Knowing that voice in his sleep, Henry snaps around and his eyes widen almost comically as he takes in the surprisingly unsteady form of the woman who had raised him for the first eleven – almost twelve – years of his life.

"Mom?"

"You were supposed to wait upstairs for me to...give you the signal," Emma grumbles, her voice rough. She seems noticeably exasperated, but not the least bit surprised. A glance towards Snow earns her a that seems to say that she should have known that Regina couldn't be left waiting for this for too long.

"And you, Sheriff, weren't supposed to make a complete mess of giving me a simple signal to come downstairs," Regina retorts, the tone sharp but also clearly amused. Her eyes flicker towards Snow for a brief moment (it's not lost on Emma just how loaded the look they share between them it), and then back towards Henry who is just staring at her like she might as well be a ghost and he can't quite believe that she's standing in front of him right at this moment.

"Ten years," he says finally, his voice trembling. Suddenly, Henry doesn't look like the beautiful strong man that he's become, but rather the young innocent boy that he'd been the last time she'd seen him. He's practically shaking as he desperately fights not to break down in front of her.

"Hello, my beautiful - _beautiful_ - boy," Regina whispers instead of offering explanation.

He won't be swayed, though. Not yet. "You've been alive the whole time?"

"Something like that," she replies cryptically.

"What does that mean?" His voice rises. "What the hell does that mean?"

For a moment, Regina says nothing and does nothing, and that's when Emma notices the peculiar way that the former queen is standing in the doorway between the Kitchen and the Living Room. She's practically leaning against the wooden frame, as if she's using it for support. What she's really doing, though, is trying to hide her physical weakness from Henry. Emma meets her eyes and then nods at her as if to say, "let him see you."

Regina licks her lips, takes a deep breath, and then slowly – far slower than Henry has ever seen his force of nature mother move – she steps into the kitchen and allows her son to actually get his first real look at her.

"You're hurt," he says, the anger seeping away from him as his eyes sweep down towards her cane, and the badly shaking hand that rests upon it. "They hurt you?" He swallows as he says this, and she sees something like fear flicker across his handsome face."What did they do? Why?"

"None of that matters. All that does is that I'm here now," Regina insists because she doesn't want to speak to her son about the absolute nightmare that she'd somehow managed to live through for over three years or the fear and she doesn't want to talk to him about waking up in a hospital room without a single memory and only pain to keep her company, and she certainly doesn't want to discuss the anguish and loneliness that had followed over the last seven years.

He doesn't need to know how very broken she'd been.

He only needs to know how much better she feels as she looks at him.

And how whole she'd feel if she could just touch him.

He nods his head slowly, like he's trying to get himself under control.

"You were just gone," he tells her, his words thick and broken, and she thinks for a moment that maybe he's about to cry; Regina knows that she is, and she's more than a little bit afraid of what will happen if she does. Over the last several years, she's had to work hard to control her even more than normal shifting emotions thanks to the rather extensive damage done to her brain by the maniacs at the Home Office. She doesn't know what will happen now if she lets everything out; she doesn't know if it will destroy her completely. "I thought you were dead."

What she does know is that she doesn't care.

"Oh, Henry, I'm right here," she whispers and then, slowly, she takes a hesitant step towards him. The motion is without her normal grace, and it hurts, but she thinks of nothing but the need to hold him, and then when she sees the way he reaches towards her, she feels little beyond the strength of his arms.

She's his mother and she should be so strong for him. She needs to be.

She can't be.

Because it's been ten years and he's still her everything.

His arms around her make the last ten years disappear in a flash and the pain she feels becomes irrelevant because he's holding her like she's the one thing - maybe the only thing - that completes him and makes everything absolutely right in the world, and nothing means more than that to her.

"Mom," he whispers, and she thinks she feels tears on her face. "Mom."

Henry is so very much taller than her now, and she's being completely consumed by his size and strength, but it's something like heaven to her.

She holds on tighter even though her head is starting to spin and she thinks that she's close to passing out from the overwhelming nature of everything. She won't, though, because that would mean surrendering his touch. It would mean letting go of the embrace that he's so freely giving her.

Ten years ago, such a hold would have been impossible; it would have led to him pulling away more and to losing him even more than she already had.

Now, it brings him back to her.

Somewhere behind her, she hears Emma say to her mother in a quiet whisper, "I think that maybe we should give them some space."

* * *

She doesn't want to sleep.

She's afraid to do so because entirely too much of her fractured mind believes that this is one of those hallucinations that she had comforted herself with during her three years of tortured captivity. She's terrified that if she closes her eyes and allows the world to sweep away from her for a few hours, when she wakes up, she'll still be alone and broken in her condo back in Bangor. She'll still be the woman who once commanded a kingdom and now struggles to walk down a hallway.

Unfortunately, she's not as physically strong as she'd once been, and the emotional strain of the day has sapped whatever energy she'd begun the morning with. Reluctantly, she allows her son - who she'd unfortunately almost collapsed upon in the kitchen much to his horror (and hers) - to convince her to rest for a few hours. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the promise from him – one he offers up freely – that he'll stay beside her the entire time.

He does.

* * *

She's the one that leaves the room first. Henry is still on the bed; sound asleep, his face pressed into the pillow. When she'd woken up, he'd been next to her as promised, his hand tucked into hers like he'd just needed to touch her in order to assure himself that she'd actually been there.

She knows the feeling entirely too well.

Her body aching terribly, she slowly leaves the bedroom, makes her way downstairs with the help of her hated cane and heads into the kitchen where the lights are on. There, seated around the table are David and Snow.

"How are you feeling?" Snow opens with.

"Better," she says, and then drops herself down into the chair with a sharp undeniable wince. There are streaks of pain running through her, and she knows that before too much longer, she'll likely be forced to take something for the pain. She intends to hold off on that for as long as possible, though.

Because she wants to be awake and aware for Henry if he wants her.

"Would you like some tea?" David offers. "Water is still hot."

"That would be lovely."

He nods and rises, moving away from the two women.

"He always was good at making himself scarce," Regina notes.

"He thinks we need space to talk," Snow says.

"Perhaps he's right," Regina agrees. She glances around. "Where did your daughter disappear off to? And when did Charming arrive?"

"They swapped off. They've been running down taggers for the last couple of days" Snow replies. "We don't have quite the law and order that we used to around here. There are more teenagers doing, well…their thing."

"So I see."

They share a small smile, and then, "Regina, what you said in the letter –"

Regina cuts her off, her dark eyes suddenly quite fierce and determined. "I meant every word of it. I am sorry for what happened between us."

"At the end or –"

"All of it, Snow. The one thing that I've had time – entirely too much time, you might say - to come to terms with are the many terrible things that have happened that were my fault, and the very few ones that were not. What I do know is that the people to blame for…well, we were playing our roles."

"Yes, we were. And we lost so very much time to how very well we played those roles, didn't we?" Snow says with an almost disgusted but sad shake of her head. And then she lifts her hand up, pauses it in mid air for a beat and then places it over Regina's, just holding it there for a moment.

"I'm not frail, Snow," Regina says, eyes on their hands.

"I know you're not, but…I missed you."

"You missed me? After the hell that I put you through?"

"After all the hell that we put each other through. You said that you had a lot of time to think and come to terms with things? Well so did I, and the one thing I realized was how much I was never there for you."

"I didn't need you," Regina insists, her voice trembling a bit.

"Maybe not, but when we first met, I needed you, and I think that meant that I stopped caring what _you_ needed. Or wanted. And no matter what else happened between us after that, that's on me. So you know what, Regina? I accept your apology and…I offer one of my own. I need…I want peace between us. I want a new beginning. Whatever that means."

"After ten years?" Regina asks, unable to disguise her doubts.

"Especially after ten years. Henry lost too much. I think we all did." Her fingers tighten around Regina's and then slip between them to tighten the grasp. "There are no easy options or chances for any of us, but I think maybe we can do what we should have done so long ago and let go."

"I just want my family," Regina whispers, moisture glistening in her eyes.

"Me, too," Snow assures her. "And now, we both have it again."

Regina closes her eyes, and though part of her feels the disgust at doing it in front of Snow, she finally lets the tears she's been holding back fall.

* * *

She's beside Henry on his bed again when Emma comes into the room later that night, knocking first on the door before she enters. "Hey," the sheriff says as she steps in, her eyes showing the deep exhaustion of the evening.

"Hey," Regina responds, her eyes flicking back to her son's sleeping form.

"Is he still out cold?" Emma asks.

"He still sleeps heavy," Regina notes, her fingers slipping through his hair.

"Yeah, he does. Heavier since he went through puberty."

"I've missed so much," Regina replies with a deep sigh. Then, looking up sharply, her eyes wide, "Is he dating anyone? Has he ever been in love?"

"Well, depends on who you ask. He would say that he's been in love a dozen times over, but I don't think there's been anyone really seriously yet. No one that he's been with for longer than a few months, anyway." Emma chuckles before saying wryly, "I don't think he's found his…True Love yet."

Regina lifts an eyebrow. "Does he still believe in that? True Love?

"Some days he does, some days he doesn't. Losing you took away some of his faith in...magic and happily ever after, but at least now I know why I couldn't find you when I was looking everywhere for you during those first few years that you were gone. Hook told me that you had to be dead after what you went through with Greg and Tamara –"

She's stopped by a short snort of disgust. "What put me through was child's play," Regina tells her. "It was nothing in the grand scheme of things."

Emma frowns at this, but chooses to let it go for the moment – she has a feeling that there will be plenty of conversations to come about what Regina had gone through - and focuses back on their son. "But Henry refused to believe it. Unfortunately, that made him think other things."

"It made him think I'd abandoned him," Regina finishes, swallowing hard.

"Luckily for both of us, it was easier than you'd think for me to convince him that you'd been killed because I knew - I _knew_, Regina - that you'd never ever do that to him," Emma assures her, sitting down beside her, the full-sized mattress sinking deeper beneath the combined weight of three adults.

"I wouldn't have, and that's what started this whole mess. My inability to let go of him. Of anything, really," Regina admits with a small sad smile. "For what it's worth, though, I wanted to come back to him - come back here - right after I remembered who I was, but if you could have seen me then…"

"I get it," Emma tells her with a short nod of understanding. "It's not easy letting the ones we love the most see us when we're the weakest."

"Not weak, Emma, _broken_. I was completely and utterly broken by what they did to me." It's an astonishing confession from a woman that ten years ago would have been physically incapable of saying these words no matter how true they might have been at the time. Back then, sheer pride would have prevented it.

Now, it's the heartbreaking sadness and loneliness within her that allows her to voice these thoughts to a woman who'd once been her enemy.

"But like you said at your condo, you survived. And you're home now."

"What does that mean? Tomorrow, when Henry goes back to college and to his life, what then? I don't want to be…" she trails off, shaking her head.

"How about, we worry about tomorrow when it comes," Emma urges. "And for now, you focus on the fact that he's here and you're here and…"

"And you're here, dear?" Regina asks, an eyebrow up.

"Yeah, and I'm here, too, but for now, I'll be in my room sleeping like a baby because I figure what you want - what you need - is him. Just him."

Regina smiles in admission of this.

"Then good night, and in the morning, the three of us will have breakfast together, and then we will figure out everything else then, okay?"

"On one condition."

"Name it."

"The truth. Why are you being so kind to me? We were never friends."

"No, we weren't," Emma admits with a small frown. "But maybe if we'd both played things differently, we might have been. Who knows, right?"

"You and your mother are so very different in so very many ways," Regina notes. "But you're so very much alike in so very many other ones."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I suppose that for once, it is one."

"That's good to hear. And on that note, sleep well, Regina." She gets up off the bed, then lightly places a hand on Regina's shoulder, the gentle contact warm and soothing in a way that makes something flutter in the middle of the former queen's chest. "It is nice to have you home, Your Majesty."

Regina smiles. She lifts a hand, places it over Emma's, and lets their fingers touch for just the briefest of moments before she pulls it away and returns her attention back to her sleeping son. A few seconds later, she hears the bedroom door close, and then mother and son are encased in darkness.

"Mom?" Henry mumbles suddenly, sleepily looking up at her. He blinks and looks up at her. "You're here, right? I didn't dream everything? Because if I did, it was a really good dream, and I'd like to return to it, please."

"It wasn't a dream. I am here here, dear," she assures him, her hand moving to his cheek. She runs the back of her fingers across his skin, so very soft.

He smiles. "Just making sure." He yawns then and closes his eyes again.

Her body fatigued and sore and her head pounding terribly, she thinks nothing of these things as she reclines herself next to him.

Because she _is_ home.

**TBC..**

* * *

**As always, I can be found on my tumblr at sgtmac7 (first 7 chapters are posted in raw form there, too).**


	5. 4

**A/N:** As always thank you for all the kind words. Tumblr is sgtmac7

Warnings: Some salty language.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

"Tell me the truth," Henry demands as he rapidly strides through the door and moves to stand in front of her desk at the sheriff's station. His messy brown hair is combed back, but as always, it spills over his forehead and into his green eyes.

"What about?" she asks, chewing on the cap of her pen and not yet looking up at him. The poor thing has been pretty much gnawed to death, and she's sure that at any moment she'll burst the pen and end up with ink everywhere. Again.

That doesn't stop her from doing it, though. Some nervous habits, well they die very hard, indeed.

"About Mom. I want to know the truth about my mom."

"Yeah? And what truth is that?" Emma murmurs as she finally looks up at her son, a blonde eyebrow slightly lifted. She takes the pen out of her mouth, sets it on the desk top, and then closes up the file on the recent graffiti artists that have been tagging their strange little symbol (a weird triangular thing with three circles hovering around it) all over town. David has been insistent that they seem innocent enough ("just bored kids in need of a better outlet"), but Emma has a pretty good idea what the difference between teenage hijinks and true thuggery is.

Problem is, this feels like neither one of those things to her.

No, this feels like something more. This feels like something that this sleepy little town hasn't really had to deal with for quite awhile now. Almost ten years, she thinks grimly before shaking the thought away.

Because that's a problem for later.

For now, she looks back at the hard determined gaze of her son, and waits for him to reply.

"What's wrong with her?" Henry presses. "I want the truth about what happened to her, and why she seems like she's in so much pain. It's been a long time since those monsters had her, Emma; she should be better than she is, right?" His green eyes are steady and intense, and for a moment she just stares back at him and wonders when he got this big and strong. She'd been there for all of his puberty, and even she doesn't quite remember him becoming this man.

"I wish it were that easy," Emma says after a few moments. "As for what happened, you'll have to ask her."

He shakes his head in the negative. "That's bullshit, and we both know it."

"Henry –"

"We both know, Ma, that she'll never tell me what's wrong with her because she thinks she can't be weak in front of me." His face screws up into an expression of frustration before he adds, "Some things never change."

"Some things do. A lot of time has passed since you last saw her," Emma reminds him. "Things aren't the same. Ask; maybe she'll tell you the truth."

"Yeah? Do you think she will?" he volleys back. "Your turn for the truth."

She sighs dramatically. "Is this my fault? What a pain in the ass you are?"

"Probably because you are," he shoots back, his voice layered with a little bit of teasing and a whole lot of fiery determination. "But my stubbornness is completely hers. And you know damn well that I won't stop until I find out what happened to my mother while she was gone. So what don't you just tell me."

"Because it's not my story to tell, Henry. It's hers."

"And she probably still won't be honest with me about it," he grouses.

She shrugs her shoulders, but doesn't deny his words. "You won't know until you try."

"Fine, I'll ask her, but if she refuses to tell me, I'm coming back."

"You really are a pain in the ass."

"I love you, too," he answers, his voice softer now, completely affectionate.

She rolls her eyes, then waves her hand towards the door. "Go away; I have work to day. Shitty teenager problems. You recall those, right?"

"I was a great teenager."

"Humble, too. Now get lost."

"I mean it, I'll be back if she stonewalls me."

"And I'll still tell you it's not my story," she replies.

"You suck," he tells her.

"Yeah, yeah."

He huffs in annoyance at her, and then all but stomps out of the sheriff's station. She hears the door shut behind him, and sighs. She has a pretty good idea that despite her words to him about it not being her story to tell, he'll be back in a few hours. The sad truth is that even though ten years have passed, after spending the last few days with Regina, she feels like she still knows the former queen well enough to be certain that she won't want to tell their son of the utter and complete hell that she went through.

As is, Regina has just barely scratched the surface of that story with she and Snow, and Emma well imagines that further details about her captivity will take more time and patience before Regina will be willing to speak of such.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, Henry had inherited impatience from both of his mothers, and that means that he'll keep pushing and pushing.

Hopefully he won't push Regina too hard before she's ready for it.

Deciding that it's probably for the best if she doesn't worry about that for now because there's nothing she can do about it just yet, she reopens the folder on the taggers, puts the end of the pen into her mouth, and for the fifth time since she'd come to work this morning, she just stares at the strange images that these little punk kids have been drawing all over town.

"What are you?" she mutters through the plastic of the pen cap.

She has a terrible feeling that she's not going to like the eventual answer.

* * *

It's more than a little strange to be all by herself in Emma townhouse. It's even stranger to have woken up here – wrapped up tight and comfortable in the heavy blankets of Henry's bed - by herself, apparently trusted not to do anything well, evil. Sure, it's been ten long years since those dark days, and so very much about her has changed, but Regina can still vividly recall the wary fear that people had regarded her with at all times. Like she'd been some kind of vicious beast just seconds away from attacking.

Perhaps, she muses, she had been.

Rising slowly from the bed, she winces as a sharp wave of pain echoes from her toes to her hip. She's gotten used to this, but there are days when the agony is so intense and raw that she has no other choice but to find herself back on the bed curled up into a tight ball, her eyes closed against the hurt.

She won't allow that to happen, today, though; she won't risk being found by Emma or Snow or God forbid, Henry like this.

So instead, she takes a deep chest rattling breath, and then another and wills the pain back into submission. Her legs tremble fiercely, and for a thundering long moment she thinks her knees will buckle beneath her and throw her to the ground in an undignified heap, but for once they hold.

For once, her body obeys her. Her head is hammering, but she can deal with that because no one can see that pain as long as she controls her face. And she will because her son deserves to see the mother he's missed and not the mess that she's become since the day she'd woken up in the hospital.

Jane Doe instead of Regina Mills.

Feeling the onslaught of painful memories of those early days in the hospitals - memories that she has no desire to relive - she closes her eyes and places a shaky hand against the wall, steadying herself so that she can try to pull herself together. It's all about getting everything back under control again. That's what she's been trying to do for seven years now.

Down below, she thinks she hears a door open and close. "Mom?" a man calls out, and though it's much deeper than the one she remembers, she knows without even thinking about it that the voice belongs to Henry.

"I'm up here, dear," she calls back, a smile involuntarily spreading across her lips. "I'll be down in just a moment." Her eyes track over to the brown pill bottle on the counter, and for just a moment, she considers taking one to help her control the pain that continues to streak up and down her body.

She chooses not to, though, because the pills always – _always_ - make her sleepy and foggy, and utterly incapable of being strong.

And she has to be.

He deserves nothing less from her.

"Do you need my help?"

"No," she answers, flinching at the question. One more set of in and out breaths, a glance towards the mirror to ensure that she doesn't look pale or haggard, and then she leaves her son's bedroom, and walks down the stairs to greet the very same boy in the kitchen. "Hi," she beams at him.

"Hey," he replies before stepping forward and hugging her. That she feels like everything inside of her melts at his contact is something she keeps to herself, but if he were to look at her this moment, she's knows there would be tears in her eyes because right now, she honestly believes that every bit of the nightmare that she'd gone through had been worth it to bring her back to this.

"I thought you were supposed to be getting back to school today," Regina notes as her hand reaches up to lightly press down on a strand of his unruly hair that's sticking up. When it refuses her, she tries again, frowning.

"Tomorrow, and I do have to get back, but did you really think I'd leave without telling you?" he asks as he pulls away to look at her, his sharp eyes entirely too wise. "Besides, I was hoping we could talk. I have questions."

"Henry –"

"You know you both do that."

"Do what?"

"You and Ma – you both sigh my name like that when you want to push me away from talking about something that you don't think I'm old enough to know about. You both even use the same exasperated tone."

"I believe that it's called being a mother," she teases, her hand again rising to bat at his hair, which is quite stubbornly refusing to cooperate.

"Maybe, but it's also called avoiding the question."

"And what question is that?" Regina asks as she steps back and slightly away from him, unable to hide the slight tremor in her tone as she fears what he's going to ask of her. Years ago, she would have been able control such an impulse easily, but now she's so raw and exposed that she's certain that if he looks hard enough, he can see into her.

Right through her, even.

"What happened to you?" he asks. "What did they do to you?"

And there it is; exactly the question that she'd been so dreading.

She forces a fake smile, one that reminds him a bit uncomfortably of how she looked when she was Mayor Mills. "I was hurt, but I'm okay now."

"Hurt by whom? When? Where? Why? What happened, Mom?"

"None of those details are important now," Regina insists as she almost blindly reaches out for the wall to once again steady herself. She'd left her cane back up in his bedroom because she hadn't wanted her son to start associating her with it, but now she's regretting having let her pride lead the way (as usual) because she can feel the grinding exhaustion and weakness in her muscles. She can feel that strange watery sensation she always gets just before her body seems to betray her completely.

"They are to me," Henry replies just before he moves forward, and before she can protest, wraps his arms around her torso so that he can help keep her on her feet. It's utterly humiliating to have to be held up by her child, and she's disgusted with herself for needing him like this, but curiously, he doesn't seem to be feeling the same way. "I want to understand how this happened to you and I want to understand how to make you better."

"All you need to understand," she assures him as she allows him to gently guide her over to the couch in the Living Room. "Is that I am here now, and just being here makes me better." She sighs in relief when he sets her down on the soft fabric, and then immediately scolds herself for the reaction.

"But you're not okay," he tells her, his frown deepening.

"I am," she says. "I'm the best I've been in a very long time."

"You're not going to tell me what happened to you, are you?"

"I can't."

"Can't or won't."

"Won't," she admits. "Because you don't need to know about those things."

"I'm not a little boy anymore, Mom."

"Yes, you are," she answers with a soft smile. "No matter how old you get or how big and strong you are, you will always still be my little prince, Henry, and I will still always have the right to protect you when I can."

"I want to be here for you," he tells her. "Like I wasn't before."

She shakes her head almost desperately, her eyes shot wide with something that almost looks like panic as she reaches out for his hand. "No! No."

"Mom," he protests, looking down at the grip she has on him. It's so strong and tight, and it scares him more than he might like to admit because she looks scared, and as he searches his mind, he can't remember another time when he'd seen her like this. Angry, frustrated and vengeful, but not scared.

"Oh, Henry, don't you understand?" she whispers as her fingers weave between his. He squeezes back as if to anchor her, as if to tell her that yes, he's here and no, he's not going anywhere. "It wasn't your place to be there for me before. It was my place to be your mother and to take care of you, and I never did that especially well, and I promised that I would. I will be damned if I don't do better now that I have a second chance with you."

"Mom," he tries again.

But she'll have none of it, shaking her head. "Tell me about your college course," she says, changing the subject and forcing another smile. When he starts to protest again, she shakes her head. "What are you majoring in?"

"This conversation isn't over," he informs her, using the same even determined gaze that he'd used on Emma earlier. It works better on Regina simply because she's never seen it before and it momentarily surprises her.

Still, for everything that changes, some things stay the same, and his mother's ability to recover from even the strangest of things (God, how he hopes that's true, he thinks as he takes in her not quite as strong as it used to be frame) is one of those things. After a moment's pause and a quick study of him, Regina waves her hand as if to dismiss the subject outright.

"Well, it is for now," she replies, adopting a hard no nonsense tone that reminds him of the past in a way that actually makes him smile just a little bit. "Now," she says, "talk to me about school. I want to know everything."

"Fine," he says, dropping himself with a petulant thump to the ground next to the couch. Reaching out, he takes one of her hands in his, and then begins to speak about what his world had been all about yesterday.

The world that means so very little to him today.

* * *

What Emma sees when she finally gets back to her townhouse at just before seven that evening is almost a complete reverse of the previous night. Now, instead of Regina sitting next to a slumbering Henry on his bed, their son is seated next to his sleeping mother – he's on the floor and she's on the couch, and he's just gazing at her like he's afraid that if he blinks or looks away that she'll be gone again. He's holding her hand in his, so very tight.

"Everything okay, kid?" Emma asks as she hangs up her leather jacket.

"Yeah. She's tired," he replies with a soft nod. "It was like we were talking, and then she was sleeping. No warning whatsoever. Awake and then like this. I think she's been hurting most of the day. Not that she'd tell me."

Emma frowns at this, though it's not unexpected. She'd called up some old business friends and finally – with some heavy cajoling (okay, more like heavy blackmailing) and a few promised favors (her next born) – she had managed to get her hands on Regina's full medical and police file, and well, the two of them together had painted a fairly vivid and hideously ugly picture of a woman who had all but been destroyed by the captivity and obscene torture that she'd been submitted to for a little over three years.

"I'm worried about her," Henry continues.

"I know you are, and I am, too but I'll tell you this much: she is better now than I think she's been in a very long time," Emma assures him as she approaches. "She's got you with her, and that makes her stronger."

"If you say so."

"I do." She pauses, studies him for a moment, and then continues on with, "I take it that she wasn't willing to give you any details."

"No."

"I'm sorry," she says, reaching behind the couch and grabbing a blanket, which she then places over Regina's legs and waist to help keep her warm.

"I don't want to go back to school," he says, sliding his hand out to lightly brush a strand of dark hair away from his mother's closed eyes. "I think maybe I should take a leave of absence and –"

"Nope. No way," Emma breaks in. "No chance."

"But –"

"She'd never allow it, and neither will I."

"Ma! Come on! Be reasonable here. She needs me. You know she does."

"I agree with you; she does need you," Emma confirms. "But not every moment of every day. She's been surviving for the last ten years, Henry. The last seven completely on her own. Your mom is still your mom, and though I know it's probably harder to remember it these days, she once ran an entire kingdom on her own. She's not an invalid and she neither wants nor needs a caretaker. What she needs is family, and maybe some space to breathe."

"I don't want to lose her again."

"You won't," Emma replies. "I promise you that. But you are going back to school tomorrow morning, and that's the end of this discussion."

"Do you have any idea how many mothering tics the two of you have in common?" he growls out, looking like he'd like to scream. "She pulled that same idiotic line on me when I asked her what happened. I'm not a fucking child anymore, Emma. I am a grown man, and I can handle the truth."

"And when she's ready for you to hear it, you will. Until then, school."

He shakes his head in disgust. "Fine, but I'm coming home every weekend."

"What about your job?"

"Screw my job."

"Henry –"

"Is there an overall reason that the two of you are arguing like small children over the top of me?" Regina asks suddenly, her voice husky with sleep, but also slightly sharp with pain. She's looking up at them, her eyes slightly glazed over, but still aware. She looks annoyed, but somewhat amused, too.

"We were just discussing our son's plans to return to school in the morning," Emma notes in her most cheery tone, staring right at Henry.

"I was saying maybe I shouldn't," Henry offers.

"Why wouldn't you?" Regina queries, still too sleepy to be coherent.

"I figured I'd stay here and you know, help you."

"No," she says immediately. "Emma is right, you need to return to school."

"See," Emma can't help but throw in. "I told you so. Emma is right."

"Very mature," he counters.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. " Then to Regina, "Are you hungry?"

"A bit, yes."

"Good; I have pizza on the way. I ordered a salad for you."

"I'd actually prefer the pizza if that's all right."

"Really?" both Henry and Emma say at once.

Regina smiles thinly at this. "Really. I haven't much care for salad anymore."

There's clearly more to this story – the tale of a woman who previously would not have been caught dead in public consuming something so greasy and nutritionally worthless as pizza – but for now, Emma lets it pass because she has a feeling that it somehow wraps into the rest of Regina's nightmare.

Henry, though, has a frown stretched across his lips as he continues to study his mother carefully, like he thinks that if he just looks hard enough he'll understand everything that's happened to her, and then know exactly how to make her better, and how to make her strong again and fearless again.

Emma knows better, though; some fixes need more than love.

Though, she thinks as she watches mother and son smile at each other in a way that is heartbreakingly real, it's a start.

"All right, then," Emma nods. "It should be here shortly. Would you care for some wine? I think I have a not too terrible red somewhere in the back."

"I'd love some, but it's probably not a good idea," Regina replies cryptically, and that's when Emma notices the tight lines of pain around her eyes. The lines which seem to suggest that Regina will likely eventually be forced to succumb to the clearly perceived weakness of taking a painkiller.

"Eh, for the best, anyway," Emma replies with what's meant to be a careless shrug. "I think we both know that I have absolute shit taste in wine."

"Well then, some things really haven't changed, have they, dear," Regina muses, drawing a smirk from Emma.

"Hey, Ma, can I have a beer?" Henry asks as he stands up.

"Absolutely not! " Regina answers immediately, and then blushes when two sets of green eyes snap towards her in surprise. "I'm sorry," she quickly apologizes, her head dropping down in a way that makes Emma's stomach flip over. "Old habit. You're twenty-two so I guess it's all right now, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he grins, and Emma finds herself relieved that for all he sees, he hadn't noticed his mother's odd reaction. "But I don't drink much. Promise."

Regina chuckles at this, her expression fond. She starts to stand up, but then immediately stops, the lines around her eyes tightening up even more.

"Henry," Emma says immediately. "Why don't you go set the table?"

His eyebrow lifts, and his mouth opens and she knows that he's about to argue, but then with a loud sigh, he turns and heads towards the kitchen.

"Subtle as a brick," Regina notes.

"As you said, some things haven't changed," Emma replies before gently sliding an arm around Regina's waist and helping the uncomfortably light woman back up to her feet. "Where's your cane?"

"Upstairs."

"He saw it yesterday, Regina. He knows you need it."

Regina just stares back at her, defiance gleaming in her dark eyes.

"Right. Tell me when you want me to let you go."

"I'd like you to let me go right now," Regina says. "But if you do, I'll fall so…give me just a moment to get my legs under me; they fell asleep."

It's clearly a lie, but one that Emma decides to let pass for the moment.

"As long as you need," she says instead.

Regina sighs, her eyes tracking towards the kitchen where she can see Henry putting plates on the table. "You did a good job with him," she says softly, trying to ignore the sharp bloom of pain in her chest. No matter how much she wishes it didn't, it hurts to have lost so much time with her son.

"I had a damned good foundation to build on," Emma offers back in return. "He was a smart and loving kid when I got him; all I did was make sure he never changed. He's my son, Regina, but he's sure as hell still yours, too."

"Which is why I need to protect him from what he doesn't need to ever know about. He doesn't need to know what people are capable of."

"He already does," Emma says. "He's already buried too many people."

"Because of me. Because of who I was."

"Because life hasn't always been easy for him, either," Emma says.

"I know," Regina says softly. "And part of me thinks that I shouldn't have come back for exactly this reason; it's why I stayed away for so long, but -"

"But it was time to come home, and we're both glad you did."

Regina nods at this, but then says, "I appreciate that, but I need your help convincing him not to push on knowing more about what happened to me."

"It doesn't work like that," Emma laughs. "Henry may be twenty-two now, and a whole lot taller and bigger than both of us, but he's still the independent pain in the ass kid who does his own damned thing whenever he wants to, and that means ignoring people telling him what to do."

"He doesn't need to know," Regina says again, desperately.

It's perhaps this clear pain and fear in Regina's voice that makes Emma look at her harder, and it's this desperate need for assistance that makes Emma really realize just how insistent and frantic Regina is about this request.

"Okay," Emma says softly. "I'll do my best to convince him to let it go."

"Thank you."

"But for what it's worth, while I understand that you don't want him to know what happened to you, and I respect the hell out of that, I want you to know that I am willing to listen if you do want to talk about it."

"I don't."

It's at that moment when the doorbell rings signaling the arrival of dinner.

And the end of this conversation.

For now.

"I'm okay to stand on my own now," Regina tells her, and there's an odd grimness in her tone mixed with something that sounds a whole lot like hints of the stubborn pride that has always defined Regina. "Get the door."

"Still giving orders, I see," Emma notes, though she's grinning.

"And I see that you're still following them as well as you ever did."

They share a comfortable smile, and then Emma heads to the door.

* * *

"When did you take the painkiller?" the sheriff asks as she softly steps into the Living Room. She's holding the folder about the tagging case in her hands, and had been intending to start looking it over again at the kitchen table, but had ended up stopping just short when she'd spotted Regina dropped back against the couch, a dazed look in her foggy eyes.

"About a half hour ago," Regina drawls, sounding completely drugged.

"Will sleep hit soon?"

"Very soon."

"Good. Then we should get you up to Henry's bedroom."

"Here is fine. He needs his rest."

"You really are a stubborn ass. Even when you're high."

Regina simply smiles at this, the expression vaguely goofy yet somehow uncomfortably sad. "Sit," the former queen pleads. "Don't go."

"Okay," Emma agrees, thinking that this request is not about her especially, but rather the presence of a person that Regina knows means her no harm.

With an undignified, thump, Emma drops down in front of the couch, sitting in the exact same place that Henry had been when she'd come home earlier, and then opens the folder and starts to flip through information that she's pretty sure that she could recite from memory at this point.

"What's that?" Regina asks, practically slurring her words now.

"A case I've been working on. Some little shits have been going around town for the last couple of days tagging this stupid symbol everywhere. I don't know exactly why it's bothering me - I mean it's probably just kids being kids - but it does. I've looked through every database I can find, and checked with some of my buddies in the big city gang units just to be sure, but no one knows what it is, and my mother doesn't believe it's from the Enchanted Forest. I checked with Blue, and she doesn't recognize it, either."

"That's because it's not from my world," Regina murmurs. "It's from here."

"You know what this is?" Emma asks, turning to look at her.

"Yes. Because it's theirs." Regina laughs then, the sound vaguely hysterical even though her mind is little more than a field of very soft marshmallows right about now. "That strange little triangle there, it's the calling card of those high up in power at the Home Office. It's the crest of _their_ Queen."

"Are you sure?" Emma asks, cold dread seeping into her gut. It's been ten years since they'd heard a word from any of those goons; ten years that the shield that Gold had erected around Storybrooke had held, and ten year that that shield had kept everyone safe and secure behind it.

Safe and secure from those who would do them harm.

Now, apparently, that safety is gone.

Just a few long days ago, Emma had assumed these weird little symbols to be the work of the bored teenagers around town that tend to get creative whenever they get restless thanks to small town life, but if Regina is right (and Emma fears she is), apparently, she'd been very wrong indeed.

And now that she actually thinks about it, it seems a terrible and unsettlingly strange coincidence that the letter from Regina had been sent from Bangor on almost the exact same date that the tagging had begun.

An uncomfortable coincidence that she doesn't at all believe in.

"I'm sure. It's them. It's her," Regina mumble out as though she's speaking through cotton, and then her eyes drop closed, and she's out, tossed into the cold chemical induced sleep of her high dosage painkillers.

"Of course you are," Emma sighs as she looks back down at the symbols.

And then thinks to herself just how very glad she is that Henry will be returning back to school in the morning.

**TBC...**


	6. 5

**A/N:** As always, thank you.

Warnings: Some light language, and some discussion of torture. At this point, very mild, but be aware.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

"You know, Emma, it could be just a really strange coincidence," Snow suggests weakly (like she doesn't even believe her own words) as she sits down across from Emma at the small wooden table in the middle of the kitchen. David is, as always, hovering nearby. His hands are on his hips, and his lips are pursed like he's thinking and trying to figure all of this out. Emma's pretty damned sure that she's had the exact same look on her face for the last few hours.

Ever since Regina had confirmed knowledge of the strange symbol.

Ever since she'd called it the Home Office's calling card.

"Sure, it could be," Emma nods between sips of coffee. She's running on exhaust fumes now; the last two days have been insane what with Regina's return and the emotional reunion between mother and son, but the idea of sleeping while there might be agents from the organization that had led to so much loss, pain and destruction ten years ago is absurd to her.

These lunatics had been responsible for so many deaths (Neal's, her mind whispers at her, and then, as always, she roughly pushes these thoughts away because she doesn't think she's ever really get over Neal stepping in front of a bullet for her). They'd been responsible for ten years of Henry mourning his mother and believing her lost to him, and she'll be damned if they take more from anyone else in this town because she needs a nap.

Regina hadn't had a choice; she'd been forced into a sleep by the painkillers that her damaged body had required, but Emma thinks that it would take getting hit by a bus for her to rest before she has some answers.

Unfortunately, she's not all that sure where the answers will come from given the fact that the person who likely knows and understands the most about what's going on is currently slumbering heavily on the couch.

"But you don't think so," David translates.

"No, but I…I don't have a clue what they could want besides…her." She glances back over at Regina, frowning at the way she barely moves thanks to the painkillers. It's the slow rise and fall of her chest that confirms that she continues to breathe and live because otherwise, she's completely still.

"Okay," Snow nods. "Then let's go over what we do know."

"And then maybe, when Regina wakes up," David adds as he finally drops down into one of the chairs. "She can help us fill in some of the gaps."

"If she even can fill them in," Emma answers with a tired sigh. She runs her fingers through her hair, clenching them against a knot she feels in the middle of her scalp before releasing them and pulling her hand out again. "The medical files that I was able to get, they suggested that even after extensive therapy, she still has a significant amount of residual memory loss due to her extensive trauma, and the possibility exists that she may never remember or choose to. Those are their words - paraphrased - not mine or hers either, I'm sure."

"But what that means is that she might not even recall everything she went through in there," David sums up.

"Right," Emma acknowledges.

"Perhaps that's true, but she remembers enough to be haunted by it," Snow replies softly, her worried eyes following Emma's over towards the couch. "She remembers enough to help us. And if they're here for her, to help herself."

"All right, okay," Emma agrees as she refills her mug of coffee. "So what we do know is this: ten years ago, Greg Mendell AKA Owen Flynn tracked down this town so that he could find Regina for what she took from him."

"His father," David inserts, frowning a bit. It's been a very long while since he's thought about all of the terrible things that Regina had done; there'd been no disputing how red her ledger had been, but even ten years ago, they'd all been horrified by the idea of what Regina had gone through at Greg's hands and back then, they hadn't even known the half of it.

"Right," Emma confirms. "Neal's fiancee - his girlfriend – follows him into town. He spends the next several weeks stalking Regina and confirming her identity, which we know because we found all of his home videos. Tamara kidnaps Hook from New York and then she brings him back to Storybrooke at which time they all team up to try to take Regina down. After she burns down the bean fields, and retrieves the trigger which Hook eventually deactivated, Regina is taken prisoner by the three of them. We tracked her to the Cannery where Greg was electrocuting her, but that's where her trail went completely cold for us. I think it's safe to say at this point that sometime between when Hook left and when we got there, Greg and Tamara turned her over to someone at the Home Office who took her back to somewhere in Bangor."

"Makes sense so far," David states.

"Except it doesn't," Emma protests. "Regina should not have had magic available to her once they took her across the town line so what did they want from her? Their whole mission was supposed to be about destroying magic. Why not just kill her here in Storybrooke and be done with it. Why torture her for so long?"

"Revenge for Greg doesn't make sense," Snow says.

"Not three years of sense anyways. Besides, from what Hook told me, they'd already hurt her pretty badly. What he said was why I thought she might be dead to begin with. I mean we never found a body so I kept looking, but the whole time I was, I kept remembering how sure he was that she had to have died."

"Hook was wrong," Snow says unnecessarily.

"Well, assuming that this does have something to do with magic and the Home Office's obsession with destroying it, from what we know, it can't be used outside of Storybrooke, but that doesn't mean that it's not still in her body, right?" David asks, frowning as he turns the thoughts over in his head. He's never really spent much time dwelling on the logistics and theories of magic; never really cared to think too deep on it, but now, to protect his family, he finds himself forced to, and he can't say as that he much enjoys the experience. "I mean your magic is elemental. Is Regina's as well?"

"That might be it, Emma," Snow nods. "I doubt they've had access to too many magic users that weren't given it by an object like Rumplestiltskin was or taught it from a book like Cora was. She might have been their –"

"Their Holy Grail, right," Emma replies with undisguised disgust clear as a bell in her voice. "That doesn't actually make me feel better about any of this because if she was that, it's hard to imagine that they just let her go."

David startles at this. "You think this is some kind of plan to get back here?"

"I think we have to at least consider it. I mean, we safeguarded Storybrooke after we defeated Greg and Tamara and kicked the rest of the Home Office agents out of town," Emma reminds him, her green eyes intense. "Gold helped us put up shields so that no one else from outside could ever get in and endanger the people here again. Don't you think it's a bit strange that when Regina finally reaches out to us to come home, their agents reappear within our border? And not to pile it on too high, but how did the post office manage to deliver a letter from Bangor to a town that doesn't exist."

"But Regina wouldn't have known that it doesn't exist anymore," Snow adds on, suddenly speaking quite fast as she starts to put everything together in her head. "She wouldn't have known about Gold's shield; the last thing that she would have know was that outsiders _could_ get into town. But Emma, that would mean that someone from the Home Office worked with someone from here. There are no more outsiders here so it would have to be someone that's native to Storybrooke…why would they do such a thing?"

"Maybe vengeance against Regina. Maybe a way out of here. Honestly, I have no idea why; I just know that not good doesn't even begin to cover this. If they've been watching her the whole time, they've been waiting for her to come home. They've been watching and studying her like a lab rat."

"This is all conjecture," David insists, looking fairly green. Perhaps it's the idea of this woman who was for so very long his mortal enemy, but always defiantly strong, having been reduced to something so small that unsettles him so much, but whatever it is, he feels like he's going to be sick.

"It's conjecture that makes an entirely disturbing amount of sense," Emma answers grimly, following her mother's gaze towards Regina. "They broke her down, and then let her escape only I'm willing to bet she has no actual memory of how she escaped; she probably just thinks that she must have."

"Why do you say that?" Snow queries.

"One of the other things I was able to get from one of my old buddies in the Bangor PD was Regina's police file," Emma notes, glancing back towards her laptop which sits closed over on the kitchen counter. She makes no move to get it now; she has no intention of actually showing anyone the file even if she now finds herself needing to speak to her parents - as vaguely as possible, she has no intention of getting into specifics - about the rather dark and disturbing content found within it "It talked about how the day she was found, she was stumbling across middle of a busy road completely out of her mind, like she was high on came back with a whole list of drugs that shouldn't have been anywhere near her. When she was questioned weeks later about that, she told them she had no memory of it. They asked her again after she started remembering who she was and where she'd been, and she still couldn't offer them an answer as to how she ended up on the road that day. I'm guessing that she still can't."

"Oh my God," Snow whispers.

"Yeah," Emma sighs, and thinks that at least Snow hadn't had to read the details or see the pictures that she had. The ones of the marks and scars across Regina's back and chest, well she thinks she'll never forget them.

"So what do we do now?" David asks, his hand against his holster.

"For now, the two of you go home –"

"Emma," David protests.

She shakes her head. "I want Henry out of Storybrooke, and we all know that he won't leave if he thinks that the mother that he just got back is in danger. And he'll think she is if he sees the two of you here at three in the morning. So go home, and after he's gone, you can come back. Regina will be up by then, and the four of us can try to figure this whole mess out."

"What if they come for her tonight?" Snow presses.

"They won't. They've been waiting a long time for this. They let her go seven years ago and then they just waited for her to finally come home; they're not going to blow up whatever plan they have by being hasty now."

"I don't like this," David tells her.

"I know, but trust me here, okay? Trust my gut on this."

"Of course," Snow says. "But call us the moment he leaves."

"I promise." She stands up with them, and then leans forward and gives both of them a good hard tight hug – something, it occurs to her – that she would not have been able to do the last time the Home Office had turned everything upside down in this quaint little town of theirs.

So much had changed for the better since then, Emma thinks, and whatever it takes, she won't let the clock turn back to days when there had been little to come home to beside hurt and loss. That means that the Home Office can't have Storybrooke, and they sure can't have Regina back, either.

* * *

Henry notices Emma's exhaustion, and that almost ruins everything, but thankfully, right as he's about to demand to know why she's been up all night, Regina wakes up and smiles at him, and his eyes are all on her.

Emma never thought she'd be so relieved about that in all her life.

In truth, she's found herself wonderfully touched by the tenderness of this new relationship between Regina and Henry. Gone is the thoughtless boy who had hurt his mother without even realizing it, and likewise a thing of the past is the woman who'd mistaken sternness for caring. Now, with so much history behind them meaningless beyond what they should have had together, they seem to be finding a way to connect as they were meant to.

And damn, Emma thinks, if it isn't nice to see Henry grinning like he is.

She knows that he's worried sick about Regina; she can see it in the way his forehead creases as he sits down next to her on the couch, and she sees it in the almost gentle way that he takes her hand. She knows that being treated like she's fragile frustrates Regina; this is clear by the way her eyebrow lifts when Henry touches her. Yet, still, they're smiling at each other like they understand what this is all about.

Like they understand that they both need to allow each other these deeper emotions without trying to tell the other one that they shouldn't have them.

"Morning, Mom," he says, like he's amazed he gets to say the word again.

"Good morning," she replies. "Are you getting ready to leave?" Almost instinctively, her hand lifts up and she brushes hair away from his eyes.

"I don't have to," he insists, catching her hand. "I can –"

"Nice try. You're going back, kid," Emma cuts in. "We agreed. All of us."

"Yeah, but –"

"Emma is right," Regina tells him before reaching up to touch his face like she's trying to remember what he'd felt like; there's a memory caught in the back of her head, just behind the fuzz of the now wearing off painkiller. It's something of Henry as a baby. Perhaps his first day home? She can't really remember, but she can recall the feel of his skin beneath her fingers.

So soft and smooth.

She closes her eyes, and tries to force the images to the front of her mind. She thinks – as she always does when she needs to pull a memory forward - about a technique one of the doctors had shown her. It's about focusing on just the sensations that she can recall and then zeroing in on them and adding details, supplying context. She thinks she sees a face and then -

"Mom? Mom, are you okay?"

She opens her eyes and sighs. She lifts up a hand to her forehead and dances her fingers over the skin there for just a second. She can feel the headache starting to pulse, as it always does when she tries to grab for the memories that seem to be locked away. "I'm okay. Just…remembering."

"What are you remembering, Regina?" Emma asks, pushing herself forward and slowly stepping towards the couch. She seems more than a little urgent, and it makes Regina look at her with concern and perhaps even a bit of fear.

"When he was a baby," she says softly. "His first day home. Why?"

Emma shrugs her shoulders as if to suggest that it's no big deal. "Sorry; you just… you had kind of a pained look on your face. Everything all right?"

"Yes. It was a good memory." She looks at Henry and smiles. "Of you."

"Yeah?" He returns the smile, only his is bigger and his eyes are sparkling with fascination. It's like he's completely intrigued and can't get enough of Regina right now. Emma knows that there's probably some deep underlying guilt involved, but it's so much more than that. This is about the love of a child who has been for so long unable to really let the feelings out. Not that Emma or Snow or anyone had ever told him not to, but he'd always refused to say much about the subject, always assuming that others would call him foolish for missing the woman that he himself had called the Evil Queen.

Now, he doesn't have to worry about what anyone but Regina thinks of what he feels, and Regina quite clearly is happy for the affection and love.

"I was remembering how very small you were the first day I brought you home with me," she tells him, her smile growing into a wistful one. She almost mentions how soft he was, but then remembers that he's her grown son now, and such words would probably scare him away from her.

She's not sure she could bear that again.

It's already bad enough that he's leaving again. She understands why – both of the reasons why – but that doesn't mean she likes it one bit. Either way, though, she's not about to do or say anything that will push him away.

Never again.

"Oh, look, you were tiny once upon a time," Emma teases.

"He was beautiful," Regina corrects, with absolute sincerity.

He blushes a bit and looks away, a shy grin on his lips as he bows his head.

"Stop it," he mumbles.

"Still a twenty-two year old college kid," Emma laughs. "He prefers manly."

He groans. "Ma."

"Fine," Regina replies with a chuckle. "You're a beautiful man."

"Not actually better," he tells her, but then, as if thinking she might feel as though he's rejecting her, he quickly tries to soften his words with a smile.

"If it makes you feel better," Regina says. "You threw up on me the first time that I tried to tell you a bedtime story. Not quite so beautiful."

'Yeah, that's better," he agrees. And then he sighs, and makes no effort to move or do anything that would suggest that he's about to leave.

Which is why Emma moves in again. "You should probably be hitting the road," she says. "It's a long drive back, and you're already running late."

"I hate our agreement," he grouses.

"So do I," Regina tells him. "But this means a lot to me. That you're happy."

"I'm happy here with the two of you. With my family."

"Your family will be here next weekend, too, Kid," Emma assures him. "And when you graduate in a few months, we'll be there to cheer you on, and then if you want, you can absolutely move back home, but until then –"

"I'm going back. Got it."

"Good," Emma says. "Then I am going to go make you some coffee for the drive and then you're taking off. Regina, you want some?"

"Yes, thank you."

Emma nods, then heads back towards the kitchen, leaving mother and son to have a few moments alone with each other before they again separate.

"I'm so proud of you, and everything that you've accomplished over the last ten years," Regina tells him, pushing another strand of hair back and away.

He shakes his head, "You shouldn't be. Mom, I hope you know how much I missed you. I was a stupid idiot naïve idealistic kid, and I had no idea –"

"Henry, it's okay. All of those things? They're what I loved – what I love - about you because I couldn't be any of them. You're my hope."

"But I hurt you and it took me a long time to understand how badly –"

She doesn't – won't - let him finish the sentence; she simply will not let her child believe that he had ever been the cause of what had gone wrong between them. Yes, he'd treated her horribly at times and broken her heart whenever he'd chosen Emma over her or called her the Evil Queen, but she refuses to lay the burden of their issues with each other at his feet.

The past is the past, and though Regina has a pretty good idea that she'll be revisiting a rather dark and unpleasant part of it some time later today, this is one bit of the past that she won't allow either of them to ever return to.

She pulls him towards her, ignoring the sharp pain that streaks up through her leg and hip as his arms circle around her, and he all but crushes her to his chest. She feels him press his face against her shoulder, and she knows that he's holding onto her with the same kind of desperation that she is.

"I'll be here when you get back," she tells him. "I'm not going away again."

"Promise me."

She knows that she shouldn't make this promise; not with the Home Office potentially sniffing around town again (she's amazed at how clear a memory she has of the discussion with Emma the previous night considering how drugged up she'd been, but she thinks that fear has rooted it in her mind, and though she feels somewhat tranquil now, she knows the panic is just beneath the surface, just waiting to rise up), but she can't help but do it.

She can't help but offer them both the hope they'd been so long deprived.

"I promise you that I'm not going anywhere," she says, and then hugs him again with all the strength she has in her. "I love you," she tells him.

"I love you, too," he says, returning the hug in kind.

"All right," Emma says just as they're pulling apart. She's coming out of the kitchen and holding up a travel mug of coffee in her hand as she walks over to them. "Call me – call us – as soon as you get to your apartment, okay?

"Of course," Henry nods, taking the cup from her. He opens his mouth as if to start to protest again, but then suddenly he's getting the same even no bullshit kind of gaze from both of his mothers, and he just knows he has no chance in this fight. "Fine, but just for the record, you both suck now."

Both women meet this comment with a smile and he can't help but laugh.

Because for the first time in ten years, everything actually feels right again.

* * *

"Now the truth. What's going on?" Regina asks the moment Mercedes (she hadn't been able to stop herself from breaking into a massive smile when she'd seen him behind the wheel of her once beloved Benz) pulls away from the apartment, and disappears down the street. She had watched it until it had been completely gone, and then she'd stared after it for a few long seconds, already feeling the emptiness of his presence.

She tries to remind herself that such desperately possessive and needy thoughts had created some – most - of her problems years earlier, but she's finding it so terribly difficult to control her emotions right about now.

"Do you remember the pictures that I showed you last night?" Emma asks.

" The symbol from the Home Office, yes, unfortunately," Regina replies as she forces her tone to stay calm and even. Part of her is already thinking about the painkillers in the medicine cabinet, but that's weakness speaking and she doesn't need those to help her deal with this, she tells herself.

She can deal with these people.

"If they're here somewhere here in town, I wanted Henry not to be."

"I agree."

"I thought you would," Emma says, and then goes quiet. It's clear that she's trying to figure out how to say something else. How to ask something else.

"Out with it, Sheriff."

Emma chuckles. "It's been awhile since I've heard you say that."

"Nostalgic are we?"

"Maybe just a bit." She sighs then, and gets to the point. "If we're going to figure out what these goons are up to, and how they got back into this town, then we're going to need to understand what happened to you."

"I had a feeling that you were going to ask that. So I'm guessing you want to know about the three years I spent as their honored guest," Regina states. Her tone is flat, but her dark turbulent eyes betray her as always.

"I don't _want_ to, but I think we _need_ to."

"I don't remember everything."

"I figured as much, but I think whatever you do remember will be enough."

"Fine. Now?"

"Not yet. My parents are on the way over. I know you're not their biggest fan and all, but they really want to help and –"

"It's all water under the bridge to me now, Emma," Regina says softly. "All I care about is ensuring that those monsters can never come near Henry. Even if I still held a grudge against your parents – and I don't – I'd gladly work with the Devil himself if he could promise me that Henry would be safe."

"You really have changed, haven't you?"

"Not willingly," the former queen responds with a humorless chuckle of what sounds a whole lot like self-loathing. "I'd like to tell you that all of this came into being because I woke up and became a better person, but the reality is Emma, I needed to be torn apart completely for that to happen."

"You didn't deserve that nightmare."

"But that's just it, dear: I _did_ deserve it." Then, changing the subject before Emma can argue with her further. "When will Snow and David be here?"

"About twenty minutes or so."

"Very well. I'd like to take a shower if that's all right."

"Of course."

"Which reminds me," Regina says, sounding suddenly almost painfully formal. "I want to thank you for the hospitality you've shown me. I'm sure that it quite the inconvenience to have me here, but I do very much appreciate it. I assure you that I'll be out of your hair as soon as possible."

Emma laughs loudly at that, though more at the politician like words and delivery than at the statement itself. When she sees the surprised perhaps even offended look on the former queen's face, she rushes to explain herself, "Regina, you are more than welcome to stay here as long as you need to. Henry's not using his room except on the weekends, and really, I don't mind. It's actually kind of nice to have someone around again."

"There's no significant other?"

"Not for a long while now."

"Well, thank you, then."

"Yeah, you're welcome," Emma nods, doing everything she can to hide the frown that wants to break out as she tries not to stare right at Regina. There are moments when she sees the woman she'd once known, but there are others like now where she can plainly see the damage done to the former queen; she can see how badly the woman had been humbled and crushed.

And for reasons that Emma can't even begin to understand, she finds herself terribly pissed off on Regina's behalf. There had been a time when she would have gladly seen Regina's pride shattered, but God, not like this.

She watches as Regina slowly stands up from the couch, her legs shaking beneath her like they're made of Jello. Almost immediately, the clear pain that she's in causes her knees to buckle. Emma starts to move forward as if to catch her, but a hand up prevents the sheriff from coming any closer.

Swallowing hard against the agony streaking through her like a wildfire, Regina pushes her self back up to her feet, her hand settled on the edge of the couch to steady herself. "I'm fine," she says, her voice trembling.

"Maybe use the cane when you come back down," Emma suggests gently.

"Maybe," is all Regina will allow for before she heads towards the stairs leading to bathroom. It hurts to walk up them, but she's been weak enough in front of Emma for today, and with the Home Office back around for whatever reason, it's never been important to prove herself strong.

Even if it's a complete lie.

**TBC…**


	7. 6

**A/N:** As always, thank you.

Warnings: Some salty language, and some conversation about what Regina through during her time in captivity. Though it's not graphic in this chapter, it does start to get suggestive so if you are in any way sensitive, you may wish to skip this.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

When a freshly showered and dressed (she's even put a light coat of make-up on, once again mustering up whatever small amount of shielding against the world that she can) Regina finally comes back down the stairs about twenty minutes, she's using the cane to move about. She had tried to leave Henry's room without it, but almost immediately thanks to her night spent on the couch, her muscles had cramped up to the point that almost all movement feels a bit like someone is trying to ram sharp needles into her skin (unfortunately, she has a distinct memory of this having happened to her so the comparison is darkly apt), and she'd been forced to use the cane for assistance.

Her hand rested around the knob of the cane, she feels old and broken, and there's a kind of deep shame burning harshly in her dark eyes, but she holds her head up as high as she can when she greets David and Snow with a small thin smile that doesn't quite go all the way up. "Good morning," she says as she settles herself into the chair opposite them.

"Good morning," Snow repeats. "Did you sleep well?"

"Well enough," is all Regina will allow for, her expression almost completely emotionless. She doesn't need nor want her former stepdaughter to know that her sleep had been a kind of dark nothingness thanks to the painkillers.

That Snow is looking at her like she already knows this is bad enough.

"Okay," Snow nods before offering up another smile that's surely meant to be comforting. Regina thinks that she should be irritated by this kind of pitying sympathy, and part of her even is, but the exhaustion and the desire not to be alone again is so much more and so she simply lets it go. "Emma told you what we want to…talk about?"

"She did," Regina confirms. Her jaw sets and her eyes harden. "Go ahead and your questions."

"I don't think that there are specific questions," Emma tells her as she puts a cup of tea in front of her. "We just want to know what you remember."

"Why? Exactly? What does what I…went through matter now?"

Emma exchanges a look with her parents, and then sighs. "Regina, after you were taken out of Storybrooke, Gold helped us put up a protective shield around the town to keep outsiders well...out. It wouldn't have kept you from returning because of your magical blood, but it should have stopped mail from you. For ten years, we haven't received so much as an ad from the real world, and then your letter arrives. That's just...it's not possible."

"What are you saying?" Regina demands, her voice deepening with dread.

"We think there is a possibility that your captors were waiting for you to come back home to Storybrooke," David tells her.

Regina can't stop herself from flinching in reaction. It's a small movement, but she's quite certain that everyone had seen it. Just the same, she ignores their worried reactions, and hisses out, "I'm guessing that you have no idea why?"

"Not yet," Emma admits, frowning at the clear fear she sees on Regina's face. "That's kind of why we were hoping that you could tell us what you remember about how you escaped from them."

"You think they let me go so that they could track me down seven years later? Why? They had me and were able to do…whatever they wanted with me. Why would they release me to just to…" She comes to a choking stop, clearly upset to the point of looking as though she's about to break down.

This isn't anger that she's showing right now; this is fear to the point of almost looking like crippling terror, and seeing this particular emotion painted in bright bold strokes across Regina's face is a new experience for all three of the Charming's. Ten years may have passed, but their memories of the proud woman who had refused to let them see anything but the rage brewing inside of her is still vividly imprinted upon all of their memories.

"We'll figure this out, Regina," Emma assures her. "We _will_ figure this out; I promise you that."

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

"I don't."

"No, I suppose you don't," Regina replies with a small sigh. For a moment then, her face contorts into something so deeply agonized that it almost looks like it physically pains her. The expression she's wearing is so raw and hurt that it almost makes both Emma and Snow want to call off this conversation before it even begins.

"Regina," Snow says, and perhaps she means to tell her former stepmother that she doesn't need to do this.

"It's just a simple story," Regina replies, the shake of her voice undermining her words. Her shoulders lift up almost defiantly, and then she starts speaking, slowly and deliberately. "For three years, my every day was wondering what my captors would do to me next. They did every single thing that you could possibly imagine to me and then they did so much more than that simply because they could. The worst of it was the one thing I would have thought would have been the easiest to endure: complete and utter isolation. They would put me in a dark tiny room that was big enough for me to pace and sit down in, but little more than that. They would keep me in there for what must have been weeks at a time with my only contact with anyone being the sound of the flap in the door opening so that one of the guards could push food and water in for me. At first, being in that room was a relief because it meant that they weren't electrocuting me or beating me or doing anything else to me, but I started going…well, you'd think I've been used to it."

"You started what?" Snow urges.

"There's very little worse than being all by yourself," Regina tells her. "I had to find ways to keep myself from losing my mind all over again. The first time - back in the Enchanted Forest - wasn't a great experience for me, and well, to be frank, it's at least part of the reason why we're all here in this world now now. I didn't want to feel that desperation and hopelessness all over again." She looks up at Snow when she says this, meeting her eyes. "I'm not blaming you for what happened; you showed me what you believed at the time to be mercy, but my dear, it never was that."

"I'm sorry," Snow replies, swallowing hard against the guilt in her chest.

"I know," Regina says simply.

"How did you know that three years had passed while you were in there?" Emma queries, attempting to get this conversation back on track. There's so much that needs to be worked out between her mother and Regina, but those things will have to wait until this threat is over. All the same, she thinks it's a probably good sign that both of them are willing to step into their past at all; it means that perhaps, when the time is right, they can find their way towards truly reconciling and forgiving each other as opposed to simply letting go of things and pretending that they'd never happened.

For now, though, this is what matters. And this story needs to be told.

"I didn't," Regina admits. "I had no concept of time whatsoever while I was their...guest. I didn't gain an understanding of how long they'd had me until a few months into my hospital stay. Until after I remembered who I was and when I'd been taken. All I knew while I was in captivity was that at some point in each given day, I would fall asleep and then I'd wake up and everything would start all over again. I measured time by the meals that they supplied me with, but since they didn't always do that, after awhile, everything just fell together. It could have been two weeks or ten years for all I knew."

"How did you finally escape?" David asks as he rises to start brewing another pot of hot water. This seems to be his go-to way to keep his hands busy. He keeps casting worried glances over at his wife, but her eyes are on Regina.

"I have no idea," Regina admits with a slight frown as she digs into her memory. "I remember trying to escape numerous times before I actually succeeded in doing so." She laughs, then, an almost sadly hysterical sound. "One day or maybe one night, I don't quite know, one of the guards came into check on me because I'd skipped the meal that they'd provided and then he started…" she trails off once more and shakes her head as if even remembering this causes her great pain.

"Regina," Snow says gently, her hand moving to cover the former queen's.

Regina smiles softly at the contact, but curiously doesn't pull away from it. It almost seems as though she's actually comforted by it. After a moment, she composes herself anew, and then forces herself on. "It's all right; I can do this. He got a bit…free, and I bit him and while he was down, I ran through the door he'd left open. I don't think I got far. I have this memory of being back on the electrocution table after that, but that must not have been what happened because the next thing I know, I'm waking up in a bed at St. Joseph's Hospital in Bangor and they're asking me if I know who I am."

"But you didn't?" Emma asks. "Remember who you were?"

"Not at the time, no. The detectives that I spoke to when I woke up told me that I'd wandered into traffic, and asked me if I had any recall of that. I didn't. And I still don't. Probably a good thing since it seems as though I gave a fair amount of people quite an afternoon show." She chuckles humorlessly at this. "As for my memories, they came back to me quite slowly. Some of them, anyway." She taps her temple with the tip of her finger. "There are still so many things locked away in there, and it's almost always an unpleasant experience to pull them out when they start to surface on me."

"Like the memory of Henry from earlier."

"Yes, but for that memory, I'd go through any amount of pain."

"I know you would," Emma tells her. She doesn't add that she, too, would have done the same. Instead, she says, "During any of the time that the Home Office had you, did they ever tell you what they wanted with you?"

"You mean did they tell me why they insisted on keeping me alive for three years instead of just letting me die?" She shakes her head. "No, and believe me, my dear, I asked. Every single time that I'd wake up after they would beat and whip me into unconsciousness and every time I'd open my eyes after they would electrocute or drown me to the point of death, I would demand that they explain why they kept bringing me back, and every single time, all I got was stares from the doctors and a smile from her." She shivers almost violently when she says this, as if even the memory of theses dark pseudo conversations is painful and haunting to her.

They probably are.

"Her?" Snow prompts, trying to ignore the impulse she has to react to Regina's words; unfortunately for her, though, her mind is giving her horrifically graphic visuals involving Regina being hurt as she'd suggested, and it takes everything that Snow has to not run over to the sink and throw up into it.

But she figures if Regina can hold herself together right now, well then she can, too.

"I presume she was their leader. She introduced herself to me as their Queen, though I don't believe that that was her official title so much as the one she adopted so that she taunt me with her power over me. She certainly knew who I was, and enjoyed telling me as much. Beyond that, I don't know who she was. What I know is that she was almost always there for the worst of the sessions, and then she was always there to question me when I woke in the medical bay."

"What do you remember about her?" Emma queries.

"She looked to be in her mid thirties perhaps, though I suspect she might be substantially older than that. She was thin and tall, and blonde. And she was English," Regina replies immediately, because though there are some memories that have been dug deep into the crevices of her tortured mind, the one of that horrible woman is not one of them.

"You're saying English because of her accent?" David asks.

"Yes, and she utilized a polished and upper class dialect. Her clothing was also extremely expensive, and I never saw her in the same outfit twice. Her nails were also expertly manicured. She reminded me of me, actually."

An unmistakable expression of disgust races its way through Regina's eyes when she says these words, guilt darkening them for a moment before she forces herself back to something reasonably calm and measured again.

No one needs to ask to know what that expression was all about because they already know the answer; it was about the dark and terrible sins of her own past, sins that seem to weight on her like an hundred gallon drum.

Emma waits a brief moment, lets Regina finish collecting herself, and then asks, "Do you recall if was she present in your last memory – the last one you have of being on the table - before you woke up in the hospital?"

Regina thinks about this for a moment, and then says softly, "She was."

"Do you think you can try to focus on that memory?" Emma asks. She's frowning when she says this, and it's quite clear to everyone that this is the very last thing that she wants to make Regina do right now, but no one says a word in protest because they all know that it's quite likely that those dark and horrifying moments hold some of the answers that they need to try to understand what's happening in Storybrooke right now.

"I can try," Regina answers as she takes a sip from the refreshed cup of tea that David sets down in front of her. The other one was just fine, but he's anxious, and he needs to be doing something to try to help now. She smiles up her gratitude at him for the thought, and then looks back at Emma.

"Do you need us to give you some time alone?" David asks.

The response she gets is immediate and somewhat startling, "No!" Regina almost shouts out. And then, as if realizing that she's perhaps given away far too much of what she's feeling right now, she again forces her face back to what she probably thinks looks like neutral expression (it's more like a sad grimace), and then says in a much quieter but slightly trembling voice, "If it's all the same to the three of you, I've spent a very long time alone and –"

"We're not going anywhere," Snow promises, her hand tightening.

Regina nods. She then closes her eyes for a moment, and just as she had before when she'd been pulling the memory of Henry forward, she focuses on the tiny thread that she can pull on – the visual of staring up from a metal table – and keeps yanking. It hurts like a son a bitch, and there are violent red sparks of pain glowing behind her eyelids as her brain protests her efforts to remember what it clearly doesn't want her to, but she keeps on.

Because if this had all been some kind of game, if they had released her simply so that they could then follow back into Storybrooke for some reason or another, then everything she cares about – Henry – could be in danger.

And she didn't come home to lose her little boy again.

She won't lose him.

So she keeps grabbing on that thread and she keeps pulling and her teeth are grit hard enough that Snow wants to stop this right here and now, but David has his hand on her shoulder, and he just seems to understand that this has to happen. His eyes meet Emma's and she nods in agreement.

But dear does God does this suck.

Former enemy or not, none of them want to see her in this kind of pain.

But then Regina's dark eyes snap open, and she lets out a soft sob.

"Regina?" Emma asks.

"It's not all there anymore," she gasps.

"But some of it is?"

"Yes." She looks right at Emma, again unwilling to see the sympathy and sadness in Snow's eyes; she understands it, though, because whatever hatred had bloomed so fully between them, however much Snow had just wanted Regina to go away, she'd never wanted her to go through that much physical - or even emotional - pain. And even Regina in her darkest days would never have tortured her former stepdaughter to that kind of horrific degree. She'd wanted her simply dead believing that the lack of her existence would have made the agony in her soul less. Absolutely nonsense, of course, but it'd never been about rending the flesh and destroying the mind for Regina or Snow. In its own sick way, both of their fights with each other had always been about healing their broken and deeply betrayed hearts.

None of that had ever happened, but now Snow thinks, maybe when this is all over and everyone is safe and secure once more, maybe it finally can.

Once Regina is willing to meet her eyes again.

For now, though, Snow actually understands – even if she doesn't like it one damned bit – why Regina can only look at Emma. She completely gets why Regina needs the confidence and fight that Emma is offering to her.

"She was there," Regina says. "And I remember her telling the man - I suppose he was a doctor - who had been…working on me that this would be the last…treatment. That was the word they always used. He asked her if I was to be eliminated and she laughed and said of course not, but that I'd no longer be a guest of theirs because they clearly weren't going to get what they needed from me this way." She swallows hard, looking nauseous.

"What they needed from you," David muses. "Do you mean your magic?"

"I always assumed that considering their hatred of magic, that that was at least part of why they abducted me, but as I said, they were never clear about what they wanted. I can recall her telling me time and time again to just let go and give in, but there was never any other demands made."

"As far as your magic, were you able to feel it out there?" Emma queries.

"Inside the compound where they kept me, yes. When they wanted me to, anyway. They had this bracelet that they would put me on that would stop me from being able to use my magic. When it was off, I could, but the only time they'd take it off was when they were trying to use one of their machines to rip the magic out by force. I could feel it then."

"Were they able to take your magic?" David asks.

"I'm not sure," Regina admits. "I haven't felt it since that last day I spent there."

"What about we drove back into town a couple days," Emma presses. "You were sleeping, but did you feel anything at all? Even when you woke up?"

"I didn't," Regina admits.

"Were you expecting to?" Emma queries.

"No, but that's's mostly because though I can remember having used magic and I remember what it did, I don't feel any kind of connection to it, anymore. I don't have muscle memory of it any longer. I don't recall what it felt like or what it tasted like."

"It's been seven years," Snow suggests. "Maybe you're just out of practice."

"It'd been twenty-eight years the last time I'd gone without magic for a long while, and there were still days during that final year of the curse when I would wake up vividly recalling exactly how it felt to have magic humming in my fingers and through my blood. Now…now it's all gone. Like it was never there to begin with. I don't understand how they could have...I don't."

This isn't about magic, she thinks even as she stares down at her hands. Not exactly. Magic had been a kind of drug for her, though control had been the actual addiction. She finds herself not so much missing the magic as fearful of the loss of the mental connection to those memories.

And what's worse for her is the understanding that until now, she hasn't even realized that her connection to her magic had been missing.

If they could take away that, what else did the Home Office take from her?

She exhales, then, because no matter what else they had taken – and she's terribly sure that there's so much more that she'll find out has been stripped away now that she's back in Storybrooke and being faced with her past – they hadn't taken away her memories of Henry nor her love for him. She'd like to think that they couldn't remove those things from her even if they'd tried to, but that would be something of a lie because for a short time, they had done exactly that to her. They'd broken her mind so badly that there had been awhile when she'd forgotten everything including her son.

But she remembers now, and that's all that matters, she tells herself.

She remembers Henry, and she'll never forget him again.

Never.

"So maybe the Home Office doesn't want you to be able to stop whatever their new plan is," David suggests. "With your magic, I mean. If this is some kind of long game they're playing, maybe this is their idea of precautions."

"I suppose that's possible," Regina admits, her words slow and thoughtful as she turns everything over in her mind. "If I can't feel or taste my magic anymore, even if it's still running through my blood, I won't be able to control it. It'd be like I was a novice again; I'd be no help to anyone."

Emma nods her head, then says, "That still doesn't explain why they would let you 'escape' seven years ago and then just wait for you to come home."

"Maybe they didn't have a choice," Snow suggests.

"But if they had an inside person as you believe," Regina argues. "Then couldn't they have assisted their partners in getting back in long ago?"

"Maybe their partners have always been inside," Emma says. "Like sleeper agents just waiting to be activated once you returned to Storybrooke."

"This is insanity," David says. "Why so much subterfuge?"

"I don't know," Emma admits. Her eyes flicker over to Regina. "Over the last seven years, you've been mostly healing from they did to you, right?"

"Mostly. I spent quite awhile in the hospital after I woke up, and then once I was on my feet again, I needed extensive physical therapy. And other kinds of therapy, as well," Regina states, frowning a bit at the confession.

"So you went to someone like Archie?" Snow asks gently. She had almost used the term shrink, but had pulled back not wanting to offend Regina or her pride; this new relationship with the former queen is still so fresh and young, and she doesn't wish to endanger it with ill-thought out words.

"Yes. Reluctantly at first, but after awhile I realized that I enjoyed having someone willing to just listen. I don't think he believed most of what I said. In fact, I'm quite certain that he thought that I was quite delusional and had created almost everything I was telling him in my head due to whatever trauma I had suffered during my captivity, but he was still there." She laughs. "He also prescribed me a good amount of medication for anxiety and depression. I refused to take it at first, but there was a time when I started wondering if maybe he was right, and everything I remembered was just some kind of pathetic coping method so I tried his treatment plan."

"You thought you'd created yourself as one of the biggest villains in storybook history as a way of dealing with being tortured?" Emma asks.

And then she winces because damn, that was probably too blunt.

Thankfully, Regina seems more amused by the sheriff's ill-chosen words than annoyed by them. Perhaps it's the old familiarity of how tactless Emma can be that causes her to smile. "Yes," she answers. "Because creating myself a story where I was the hunter instead of the prey seemed logical for a time."

"So what made you realize it was real?" Snow queries.

"I started having dreams of Henry. You have to understand, while I was in that cell of theirs, I filled my days with…him. And even the three of you."

"Us?" David asks.

"All of you spoke to me. Sometimes you would tell me that I deserved what was happening, and that I was getting my just rewards and sometimes it was one of you there to talk and spar with me simply because I needed it to stay sharp, but Henry was always there to beg me to hold on. Even when I could still remember him calling me the Evil Queen, the thoughts I had of him telling me to be strong was enough to keep me sane for another day. He was my rock for almost three years, and then he was just gone."

"I don't understand," Emma states, her brow wrinkling in confusion. "It's totally normal for you to have stopped seeing him after you got out."

"But that's the thing: I didn't just stopped seeing him; I forgot everything about Henry as much as I've now forgotten everything about the taste and feel of magic," Regina answers, and for a moment she looks absolutely gutted. "After I woke up, and there was nothing in my mind that was concrete and real, he wasn't there, either. Even when I remembered who I was, and how to get into the bank accounts I'd hidden out in the real world, I still didn't remember my son. Until one night when I did, and then I knew who I was and that everything I'd thought I done, I had. It was all real."

"And in the past now," Snow tells her, her tone strong and determined.

"You're always the optimistic princess," Regina chuckles, but there's unmistakable humor – and perhaps for the first time even appreciation for Snow's previously thought of as infuriating constant positivity - in her tone.

"Yes," Snow agrees. And then she grins. "Always."

Emma sighs. "And on that note, I think we're probably done for now." She offers Regina a small smile. "You look like you could use a nap."

"So do you, Sheriff," Regina shoots back, an eyebrow lifted in challenge.

"Yeah, but I'm –"

"A lot of time has passed, and thankfully, we're no longer the enemies that we once were, but I think perhaps we still know each other as well as we ever did," Regina breaks in, her dark eyes locked with Emma's green ones. "You're exhausted, but think you have to be the Savior even now because so much has changed but so much hasn't. Well let me tell you, dear, we all have our limits, and I think this town needs you not to be at them."

"She's right, Emma," Snow says gently.

"Fine. I'll get some rest. And Regina will get some rest. And then…"

"And then we'll meet at Granny's for dinner," David says.

"That might not be a good idea," the former queen protests. "Ten years may have passed, but I'm sure there are many who would prefer me gone."

"Well that's too damned bad. They need to get used to seeing you again," Snow replies, her chin lifting up in stubborn defiance. "You're home now, and as long as you want it to be, this is going to stay your home."

"As I said: always the _optimist_."

"And as I said: _always_."

"Good."

And Emma – unable to stop herself from letting out a breath of relief – thinks: well at least some good has come out of this horrific tragedy.

Now if they can just manage to stop the Home Office from ruining everything that's worth having all over again.

**TBC...**


	8. 7

**A/N:** As always, thank you.

Warnings: Some language, and a bit more about the torture Regina went through. There's also a non-graphic electrocution scene. Again, if you are sensitive to any of this, I advise skipping this story.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

Walking into Granny's Diner next to Emma is awkward more than anything else. It's been ten years years since she was seen here, and though some memories are still strong for the people of Storybrooke, it seems – judging by the more curious than frightened looks that are thrown at her - as though most of the citizens have moved on with their lives.

Or maybe they just find it difficult to be afraid of their former queen as she hobbles into the diner, her shaking hand rested uneasily atop her cane, but her head still held high. Perhaps some of the folks gathered for their evening meal recognize that her time spent away from Storybrooke has clearly treated her as unkindly as they might have ever wanted to.

"Regina," Ruby says softly. She's older now, just like everyone else, and there's a kind of almost sad maturity in her dark entirely too keen eyes. Her clothes are still far more indecent than should be allowed in a place of business, but they seem more for show than Regina has ever remembered them to be; in fact, everything about Ruby seems like it's some kind of big production meant to convince everyone that she's doing just fine.

Regina makes a mental note to ask Emma about this later.

For now, she simply offers up a polite half-smile and nods her head in greeting; she has no desire to attract too much attention to herself, and she wants even less to have to answer the many questions that she can see are burning deep in Ruby's eyes. People surely want to know where she's been and why she's like this, but absent Snow making another terrible mistake – and for reasons that Regina can't quite understand, she truly believes that Snow won't betray her again – they'll be left wondering because she has no intention of talking to them about any of this.

It's bad enough that she has to bare her soul to Emma, Snow and David about it all.

"Hey, Rubes," Emma greets with a much more honest and friendly smile that reaches her eyes. "My parents aren't here yet?" She glances around to confirm her words, and true enough, the diner is decidedly Charming free.

"Not yet, but David called ahead to let us that about your guest. Just to be safe, you know?" Her eyes flicker over Regina again, and then quickly away.

"Yeah. You care where we sit?"

"Not if you don't, but I figured you guys wouldn't want eyes on you the whole time so I set something up near the back for you." She shrugs her shoulders. "You know people will start wandering in when they hear."

Regina can't stop her lip from curling up into an indignant sneer.

"I know," Emma says. "Just run interference, okay?"

"That's not necessary," Regina states, her hand tightening on the cane hard enough to make her knuckles go white. "If the idiots of this town want to leave their houses on a cold night to come see me as I am now, let them."

"Yeah, I don't think so," Emma answers. "They may need to get used to you being back and around town, Regina, but that doesn't mean they get to act like morons."

Regina smiles slightly at Emma's instinctual protective nature; touched more than she'd care to admit. "Very well," she says. "Miss Lucas, the booth in the back will be just fine."

"Okay," Ruby nods as she leads them towards a booth settled near the way back. It doesn't offer much privacy, but a little is still something.

"Thank you, dear," Regina says, and there's absolutely no sarcasm in her voice, just a gentle harmless honesty that makes Ruby's eyebrow lift.

"Yeah, sure, of course. Hey, let me know if you need anything," she says, and then turns and heads back towards the counter, her hands jammed into the pocket of the hoodie that she's wearing over her waitress uniform.

"The years haven't been kind to her either, I take it?"

Emma frowns as she watches her friend depart, her eyes catching the way Ruby's shoulders slump as she leans over the counter. "She made mistakes."

"Love, loss or ambition?

"Love and loss. Granny died a couple years ago, and she had a relationship go pretty bad on her," Emma tells her, but then clams up. Just as Regina's nightmare is her own business, so is Ruby's pain and anguish hers.

"I see," Regina says. She folds her hands together in front of her, and stares at them for a moment – watching the way they tremble even when she tightens them up to try to stop them from doing so – and then she laughs.

"What?" Emma asks, her brow knitting together in confusion.

"I'm waiting on your parents."

"Okay?"

"Emma," Regina explains with another laugh. "I am waiting on _your_ parents to arrive for dinner, and I'm actually looking forward to their arrival."

"Oh."

"Yes, _oh_."

"We move on," Emma shrugs, and then reaches out to settle a hand over Regina's shaking ones, the contact firm but still gentle. Her green eyes lift towards Regina's darker ones and she smiles as if to punctuate her point.

"So we do," Regina agrees after a moment.

It's then that the door opens and David enters hand in hand with Snow. The two of them say something to Ruby, and then head back towards the table where Emma and Regina are. "Hey," Snow greets. "Everything okay?"

"Fine," Emma nods, not at all surprised when Regina pulls her hands back.

"Good," David notes and drops down into his chair. "Sorry that we're late, but we wanted to go talk to Gold before we came over here."

"Gold," Regina repeats, unable to completely hide the distaste that colors her voice as she thinks – really thinks – about her former teacher for the first time in a very long time. "I'm sure that he was thrilled to hear I was back."

"Surprised actually," Snow offers. "Maybe even pleased."

"That's doubtful."

"What were you asking him about?" Emma pushes, inserting herself into the middle of the conversation before it can take a darker turn.

"The shield around Storybrooke," David replies. "We wanted to know if there was anyway that he was aware of that anyone from outside could have snuck their way into Storybrooke. He's fairly adamant that if they weren't around when the cloaking spell was enacted or they don't have blood that originated from outside of this world, then there's no way that they could have gotten back inside now. In fact, he was quite certain of it."

"Who's to say that the Home Office doesn't have people from our world working for them," Regina notes. "They may be anti-magic, but I imagine they have a place in their organization for useful idiots who can be turned."

"Possible," Snow admits. "But we're such a small amount of people; I think we'd notice someone that none of us knew wandering around town."

"She's right," David insists. "Even more than before, we all know each other. We may not all get along, but we know who each other is."

"Okay, so what that basically means is that whomever is spray-painting all these idiotic Home Office calling cards all around town has been inside of Storybrooke for the last ten years," Emma says. "Which is...fantastic."

"We'll stop them," David assures her. "All of them."

Both Regina and Emma look like they're about to argue against David's optimistic words; their lives having been spent understanding that you fail more than you succeed, but before either one of them can speak up, Snow cuts in with, "He's right, and we will. But since we can't do anything about any of that right now, how about we have a nice dinner instead?"

And then she smiles brightly, and for a moment, Regina understands why it is that people have always followed Snow White's lead.

Amazingly, in spite of a revelation that years ago would have sent sparks of furious rage through her blood and despite the fact that she's still so scared right now, Regina finds herself answering the smile with one of her own.

* * *

Though Regina participates somewhat in the friendly if decidedly shallow dinner conversation with the three members of the Charming family, she just barely eats; she picks at the hamburger and nibbles on the fries, and she drinks a lot of water. Her lack of an appetite is noticeable, of course, but no one says a word because they're not sure if this is the usual for her or just a matter of nerves due to the company.

Afterwards, though, when it's just Emma and Regina, and they're back at the townhouse together, and the sheriff is watching her with those intensely knowing green eyes, Regina knows exactly what Emma is thinking about.

"What?" Regina sighs as she lowers herself down onto the couch with a wince that she can't quite hide. This will certainly be a night for painkillers, she thinks, and her stomach rolls as her mind once again accepts her basic weakness.

"You don't eat much at all do you?"

"Never did."

"But less now."

"The painkillers I utilize tend to disturb my appetite," the former queen admits reluctantly. "Anyway, I eat enough to keep myself healthy."

"If you say so. What about exercise?"

"I did physical therapy for a time. I've recovered as much movement as the doctors believe that I will," Regina replies, eyes sharply narrowed as she tries to figure out where exactly Emma is going with this line of questioning.

"You know that this doesn't sound like you, right?"

"Excuse me?"

"Ten years ago, Regina, if a doctor – if Whale – had even dared to tell you that this –" she indicates towards the cane that Regina is gripping hard now and then towards the stiff and uncomfortable way that Regina is holding herself – "would be your fate forever, you would have told him where he could stick it. You would have told him that one day not only would you not need to use the cane again, but you'd be better than you were before."

"Ten years ago, my dear, I'm not sure that I could have imagined what I went through or that my body could be so damaged and still survive."

"And I get that. I do. But this feels like surrender."

"It's not surrender. _It's not_. It's…it's merely facing the facts."

"Well then, maybe it's time to face different facts, Regina; face the ones that say that maybe what you need to do is to start moving again. Starting living again."

"You're the one who scolded me for not using my cane with Henry."

"Because that was pure stubbornness and pride, and he's your kid and doesn't give a damn what package you come in, Regina. This is…well this could use a little bit of that old stubbornness. You could. For yourself."

"What do you want from me?" Regina asks quietly. Her hands are trembling again, shaking so badly that holding anything at all would be impossible.

"A little bit of fight."

"Why?"

"Because we're going to need that fight if these Home Office bastards are in town, and because the Regina Mills that I remember –"

"Is gone," Regina growls, eyes blazing. "And she _should_ be. Because the Regina Mills that you remember - the Evil Queen - well, she was a horrible monster, wasn't she? And…" she swallows hard. "She deserved what she got."

Emma's head snaps back hard on her neck, her eyes widening. "No. Regina, no."

"Yes!" Tears slip down her cheeks. "Do you know what years of intense psycho-therapy bring a person like me to, Emma? Especially when that person begins to realize that the nightmares that everyone has are the ones that they themselves have caused over and over. Do you know what that brings someone to?"

"Regina…"

The brunette woman shakes her head, unwilling to be pushed off course or to be coddled or comforted right now. "It brings you to the understanding that there isn't a person alive who wouldn't be better off if I had never been born."

"Henry. Henry wouldn't be better." She laughs humorlessly. "Henry wouldn't have been born if you hadn't."

"So I get one in the plus column, then."

"That's a pretty big plus, Regina."

Regina nods her head slowly, thoughtfully and for a moment Emma thinks maybe she's broken through the self-loathing that has suddenly gripped the former queen, but then a second later, Regina continues with, "Maybe this sounds like a pathetic self-pity party to you, but to me this, this is my reality. And my reality is that the woman that you knew ten years ago deserved every moment of torment that she received in that monstrous place. That evil woman earned every horrible touch, every awful shock, and every drop of her blood that she lost. And now? Now she deserves every nightmare that plagues her, every memory that reminds her of who she is and what she's done. She deserves it, Emma. _I_ deserve it."

"Jesus."

"Oh, dear, I would think by now that you of all people would know that are no such things as higher powers. Especially ones that protect innocents."

"Then I guess that's my job isn't it?" Emma replies, her tone defiant and something unreadable and almost frantic in her bright green eyes.

"Perhaps. So you should start somewhere else. With an actual innocent."

She stands up then, and tightly clutching her cane and then the walls, she pushes herself up the stairs to Henry's room. She shuts the door behind her, drops herself onto his bed, and then presses her face into his pillow.

* * *

"Good morning," she hears just as she's blinking herself awake. Her head is – as always – pounding away, and her dark eyes are bleary. Her mind is a bit cotton-balled thanks to the painkillers that she'd taken just before she'd turned in on the previous night, but she can figure out enough to know that Emma is standing over her bed, dressed in workout clothes.

"Miss Swan?"

"Yep," the sheriff says brightly, a travel mug of coffee clutched tight in her gloved fingers. In her other hand, she's holding what looks to be a pair of sweatpants and a red hoodie. "It's time to get up and get moving."

"No."

"Get up."

"Still no."

"We can do this all damned day, Regina," Emma says dryly. "And we will. Or you can get up and out of the bed, and throw on some sweatpants."

"Why would I ever want to do that?"

"So we can go for a run."

"Run?"

"As in jog. As in move your legs in a…moving motion."

"Still so eloquent. I see that you're choosing to ignore what I told you about my limitations," Regina drawls as she remains flat and horizontal.

"Actually, you didn't mention anything about running. I thought about it all night, and you didn't say a damned thing specifically about it. So, since you didn't, I figured it was fair game and well, here we are."

"I don't enjoy running. Or jogging," Regina replies petulantly.

"When was the last time you actually did it?"

"During my physical therapy. It was…unpleasant."

"I bet, but I also bet that you didn't have a running partner like me."

"You're not actually making it sound more pleasant now."

"Perhaps not, but I am going to irritate you until you get up out of that bed, throw on these sweats and come out with me. And you know what? Ten years away from Storybrooke may have changed a whole hell of a lot about both of us, Regina, but it hasn't changed how irritating I can be."

"So I've noticed. Fine. Leave."

"Are you getting up? And dressed?"

"Yes. But on one condition."

"Name it."

"You can't say a single word the whole time we're out…there."

"There's my Regina."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You're an asshole; I really did miss you," Emma chirps and then tosses the sweatpants that she'd been holding in her hands onto the bed. "See you downstairs," she says before turning and leaving the room, the door.

It occurs to Regina then that she hadn't actually extracted a promise.

* * *

The jog around town – slow as it is - is incredibly painful, and Regina is not able to get very far before all of her muscles cramp up and she thinks that she's about to fall to her knees, but when she does start to falter, Emma doesn't point it out; she simply slows completely and offers Regina water from one of the bottles in her backpack and then like nothing is wrong in the world, talks to her about some of the physical changes around Storybrooke.

They do this strange little dance of theirs half a dozen times before they finally head back to the townhouse, and then Emma just grins at her on her way to the shower and says, "Your kid called while we were out."

* * *

She phones Henry back while Emma's in the shower, and listens to him tell her – like this is completely normal for them to talk about these things - about his shift the previous night, and the date he'd be going on that evening.

When he notices that she's barely spoken at all, he stops his story about dropping spaghetti all over a famous politician and asks her if everything is all right and she chuckles and tells him that perhaps she's never been better.

Because Emma had been right; Henry is her one thing that is beyond regret for her.

* * *

Her first week back in Storybrooke passes in a haze of conversations about the Home Office that she'd rather not have, painkillers that she'd rather not take and exhaustion that'd she just prefer not admit to.

Unfortunately - or fortunately for her, perhaps - Emma is dead-set on getting her moving as much as possible, and though she protests each time the sheriff insists on them going out for a run together, she discovers that she does indeed find some degree of comfort in the companionship of the now daily - and sometimes twice a day - jogs.

Even if Emma rather obnoxiously refuses not to speak during them.

Thankfully, though. Emma doesn't dare to bring up the conversation from the night of the dinner with Snow and David.

Regina is infinitely glad of this because she's not sure how she could walk back the honesty of what she'd said, and though part of her doesn't want to do so anyway (she'd come to terms long ago with feeling as though she deserved what she'd gotten, and though her shrink had told her - while not understanding at all while she'd feel this way - that such thoughts weren't at all healthy, she'd clung to the realization as a form of penance). The reality is that so much bitter truth is frightening. It's one thing for Emma to be aware that her former enemy has changed, but it's quite another for the sheriff to be so very much aware of just how strongly Regina despises her own mere existence.

These are things best left unsaid.

Not that she doesn't catch a worried look from Emma – or Snow when she's over (and her former stepdaughter is always over these days) from time to time.

In any case, these things hardly matter because it's Friday, and Henry has just called from the gas station about fifty miles out of Storybrooke to say that he'll be home within the hour, and he'd sure love some lasagna.

She's not even sure she remembers how to make it anymore.

It might hurt to remember.

It _does_ hurt.

She doesn't care.

* * *

Snow and David come over for dinner, and it almost feels like what one would expect a family meal to be like. Henry and Emma and David are like hyper children throughout the whole meal, and it's utterly beautiful.

Regina wonders why she couldn't have had this year ten years ago.

She picks up the dishes from the table, and it feels so damned domestic to take them into Emma's kitchen and wash and rinse them next to Snow as the two of them watch the other three tease each other mercilessly.

"Emma told me you've been working out a little," Snow says.

"I've been joining her in the morning," Regina replies with a dismissive shrug. "Mostly she runs in place and I hobble. And she babbles about whatever cat she saved yesterday. I never realized what a talker she is."

"She's not always a talker," Snow chuckles. "But when she's running, well…suffice it to say, she's not my favorite partner." She frowns, looking almost perturbed. "Especially since she makes fun of my running style."

They share a laugh together, and then look at each other like they're wondering what this is; how can so many years of pain and anger just melt away because of a decade of absence and knowledge of torture?

And then she remembers something.

Something from ten years ago.

"_You might take away some odd kind of relief from this, Your Majesty," the icy cold voice of the British woman says, her hand settling on Regina's cheek. "Or you might not because you realize how very close you came to not having to be here at all. Either way, it's interesting isn't it that the very people that you tried to destroy time and time again chose to try to save you from this fate that you so deserve. Snow White tried to save you. I find that...fascinating."_

"Regina," she hears Snow say.

_"Tell me, Regina, do you ever think about the lives you've ruined? The people you've destroyed all in the name of magic and power? Do you think about destroying Snow White's life? Ruining a child's hope and innocence? No? Not yet? Oh, but you will. I promise you that. Remorse is good for the soul, Regina, and you are going to feel so very much of it."_

Everything dims out after that, darkness in the edges of her vision.

It's Snow who catches her when she goes down.

* * *

She comes to slowly – barely – and keeps her eyes closed and just listens.

"You should have called me in sooner," he says. The man's accented voice is familiar – perhaps even terrifyingly so – but she can't quite place it yet.

"Why? She hasn't needed medical assistance until now," Emma retorts.

"Is my mom all right?" Henry demands. "She just went down…is she hurt?"

"No, I don't think so."

"What do you mean you don't think so?" David demands. "Whale…"

Oh, Regina thinks, Victor. For reasons she doesn't quite understand, this realization sends a spark of dread and fear through her body and mind.

"I mean it's hard to say how she is exactly. You haven't told me what's wrong with her, only that she passed out, but there's clearly more to this."

"Which is nothing that you need to know about," Emma replies.

"No? Our fallen Queen reappears after ten years away using a cane and looking frail and losing consciousness and that's nothing –"

"No," Snow answers shortly. "We just need to know how she is now."

"Why do you suddenly care? Shouldn't you be overjoyed that the -"

"Hey," Emma cuts in sharply.

"That's my mother," Henry reminds him, his words practically a snarl.

"Henry…"

"All right, all right. I got it. Relax, okay?"

"Just…answer the question, Whale," David presses.

"Fine," the doctor replies, and his voice causes something sharp in her brain spark up in a way that makes her stomach roll. "Regina's blood pressure is a bit high, and her heart-rate is accelerated, but her vitals are overall within acceptable ranges. I think that she's just exhausted and needs to rest."

"Are you sure?" Henry demands. "There's nothing else wrong?"

"I don't know. I can't tell you that from here. I'd recommend bringing her by the hospital and letting me run a full battery of tests. I'd know more then."

Yes, Regina thinks, he probably would. The thing is, she doesn't want Victor to know more about her; she doesn't want him to touch her ever again.

For whatever that means.

Apparently very little because a moment later, it all just fades away again.

* * *

She dreams of a room that's far too bright, a metal table that's far too cold and a blonde woman with a chilling smile, and a perfect English accent.

"_It would be so much easier for all of us - including you, Regina - if you'd just let go," the woman says."This won't work - can't work - until you let go and allow yourself to just fade away."_

Regina tries to tell their Queen that she has let go in every single way there is, but the words catch in her throat when the electricity fills her body again. It's cold and makes her feel like someone is forcing shards of ice into her skin.

One by one and as slowly as possible.

"_It can all be over and you can finally rest, but you have to surrender," the woman tells her._

She doesn't know how else to surrender.

"_Regina, why do you keep fighting, darling? You're just making it worse. Stop holding on and let go."_

The switch gets thrown again and she screams.

* * *

They're down in the kitchen sitting around the table, none of them saying a damned word (they haven't said much since Whale had left an hour before) when Regina starts screaming as though someone is murdering her.

They're all up the stairs in a flash, but Henry is far up in the front, his long legs going two steps at a time as he races to get to his mother.

He almost stops cold when he gets to his bedroom and looks inside. He almost completely freezes when he sees the way she is shaking and shuddering on the mattress, as though she's being…

As though she's being electrocuted, he thinks, as he sees the way her back arches up off the mattress and her mouth tears open to let out another terrible screeching scream. Her hands are in tight fists at her sides, and he realizes that it doesn't matter if she actually is being tortured right now because quite plainly, she believes in the dark depth of her mind that she is.

"Mom," he yells as he races over to her side. He puts his arms around her and starts to shake her, refusing to listen to the words of warning from behind him. Things like "be careful" and "maybe you shouldn't do that".

"Henry," Emma cautions, stepping behind him.

He doesn't hear her; he imagines she means well, and is trying to warn him because deep inside his psyche he knows that trying to pull someone out of such a violent nightmare can cause a physical reaction but he doesn't care. All he cares about is stopping this. All he cares about is protecting the mother that he's missed for so damn long, and refuses to lose again.

"Mom, wake up. Wake up!"

Her closed fist flies out, then, and collides violently with his cheek, tossing him from the bed and onto the ground. It's that contact – as unexpected in her nightmare as it is in her reality – that pulls Regina from the dream.

She blinks and looks up, seeing the faces above her through the sheen of tears in her eyes. Her body aches and her muscles burn and there's an intense pain in the back of her skull, but all she sees is Henry as he rises up to look at her, the side of his face already blooming with a vibrant bruise.

"Henry," she gasps. She hears voices asking her if she's all right and what had been happening, but she blocks this all out and just looks at him. Her hand moves towards him almost on its own and she reaching for him.

He shakes his head, and she's almost certain that he's going to do what he's always done when she disappoints him. Turn and run away from her.

But then he steps forward and pulls his mother into his arms. "It's okay," he promises her, his lips pressing against her hair. "You're okay."

She shouldn't do this – he's her son and deserves better, but she folds into him so easily and her hands grip his shirt and his arms and she takes from him the strength that he so freely offers. "Henry," she says again and again.

"I'm here," he says, repeating the words until the rest of the world just fades away from the both of them, and it's just a son protecting his mother.

Until she calms against him.

He hears the door to the bedroom close quietly, and he feels the way Regina has sagged against his chest, exhaustion dragging her down again.

"I got you," he promises her. "And we _are_ going to be okay. All of us."

**TBC…**


	9. 8

A/N: Thanks as always.

Warnings: Language, discussion of torture (with some ugly details) and some emotional pain.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

She's more than a little surprised to find Regina already waiting for her in the kitchen when she comes down the stairs. "Hey, didn't expect to see you this morning," Emma notes, her tone cautious and careful as her fingers loop behind her head in order to tie her blonde hair into a messy ponytail.

"Really? And why is that?" Regina retorts. It's not lost on Emma that the former queen is dressed in her high style running clothes (after the first day, she'd had Emma pick up ones more to her liking from the local athletics store). She's not smiling, and the look on her face is serious and closed off.

Like she doesn't want to even begin to discuss the events of the previous day. Either the passing out in the kitchen or the screaming fit later on.

Still, Emma can't quite stop herself from offering up a knowing smile as she says, "You had a pretty rough night. Even I would have understood if you had wanted to sleep in. I probably would have wanted to if it were me."

"Yes, well, you're not me are you, Miss Swan?" Regina snaps back, her dark eyes blazing with an icy defiance that seems both disturbingly familiar and deeply unsettling to Emma; while she'd wanted Regina to find her fight again, she hadn't meant that she'd wanted the former queen to start rebuilding the impenetrable walls that had kept her emotions and heart locked so far away from everyone who might have wanted to care for her.

"No, I'm not," Emma replies, her tone so very gentle and non-combative.

Which is clearly quite the opposite of what Regina actually wants right now. "What's that supposed to mean?" she challenges, her tone biting and harsh. "You don't think I can handle this? Oh, let me guess: you don't think I should be doing this because I had a silly nightmare. Weren't you the one who just a few days ago was bullying me into being your running partner?"

"Just so you know, I think you're having an entire conversation without me," Emma chuckles. "But all I was doing with agreeing you. That's all."

"Bullshit," Regina replies, stepping close to Emma, and this is also familiar to the sheriff. This was a tactic that the once mayor had used to try to intimidate others into backing down or away. It doesn't quite match the woman standing in front of Emma now, but damned if Regina isn't trying.

Trying to fall back into old safe habits.

It must have been one hell of a nightmare, Emma thinks.

Or perhaps, it was waking up and realizing that she'd shattered apart in her twenty-two year old son's arms that had shaken Regina up this badly. Either way, she is now quite clearly trying to shield herself from fear, humiliation and shame, but she's not nearly as good at it as she used to be, and Emma is just patiently watching her with eyes full of understanding and sympathy, and goddamn it if all of that doesn't piss Regina off just a little bit more.

"You think I'm weak," Regina hisses. "You think because I'm on painkillers and have to use a cane to walk that I'm soft now. Isn't that right?"

"No," Emma shrugs. "I don't think you're weak at all. In fact, Regina, I think you're still probably the strongest person that I've ever known. But you're also still the proudest, and sometimes – even ten years later – that pride hurts you more than it helps you because you don't have to be. Especially not with me" She meets Regina's eyes, and then adds a soft smile that's completely free of judgment. "The only thing I want from you is for you to forgive yourself and let yourself be happy. Nothing else really matters."

Regina looks away from Emma for a brief moment, a bit of red flares around her neck and cheeks as she fights back on whatever embarrassment she's currently feeling. Finally, she mutters. "Let's just run, Sheriff. Quietly."

"If I say 'okay', will that bring on Evil Queen mode again?" Emma jokes.

Regina's eyes snap up to her, hard and furious and almost violently frightened. "Don't ever say that again," she orders, a tremor in her voice.

"I'm sorry," Emma replies, palms out to show sincerity. "I didn't think."

To her surprise, that brings on a small smile from Regina. "No, you never do," she says almost affectionately, and then she turns and heads for the door, her movements these days completely lacking the grace which had once been such a crucial part of her. Emma watches for a long moment, and then sighs.

Because it occurs to her that Regina making life interesting feels normal.

* * *

"Henry," Snow says with a large smile as she opens the front door to the loft. She's surprised to see him here so early. It's not even eight yet, and it's still pretty cold out as is evidenced by the bright red blotches on her grandson's cheeks. He's bouncing on his feet, as if anxious and agitated, and immediately alarm bells start going off in her head. Because she has a pretty good idea what he's here about. And what she is supposed to do.

What she has to do.

"Hey, Gram," he replies, his hands in the pocket of his dark peacoat. "I figured I'd drop by and see what you guys were having for breakfast."

"Neither one of your mothers wanted to cook this morning?"

"They were both gone when I woke up this morning," he answers shortly.

"Well, we haven't started cooking yet," Snow tells him, "But you're more than welcome to join us. You know that." She steps out of the way so that he can enter the loft. His steps are slow, cautious, like he's deep in thought.

"Thanks," he says as he shuffles his way over towards the breakfast table. David is sitting there already, his holster strapped over his chest like he plans to go into the station shortly. "You have any idea where they went?"

"I'm sure they just went out for a run," David tells him with that calm easy smile that seems to just live on his face. "I know that they've been doing that almost every morning for the last week or so. Emma thinks getting her moving again will help Regina's flexibility. That's probably where they are."

Henry nods his head slowly, thoughtfully. Then: "She woke up screaming last night," he reminds them. "And she looked like someone was trying to…you know I have no idea what was happening to her because even though my family is full of fairytale characters, I've lived a pretty good and safe life, and I've been pretty damned protected so I have no clue what was happening to her, but I know she was remembering someone hurting her."

"You know that she was…wounded," Snow says carefully.

"I do," he admits. "I see the cane that she has to use to get from room to room without pain and I see my medicine cabinet being full of different kinds of pills." He laughs humorlessly. "When I was younger, she would never let me see what she was taking even if it was aspirin. Because I wasn't supposed to know that she might have been hurting in any way, but now she has so many different things going on, she doesn't even try to hide it."

"Henry…"

"Look, I know this is the part where you and Gramps tell me everything is going to be okay because we have family and we'll all get through this together, but you know what? I didn't come over here to get patted on the back and given a pep talk. I came over here because I am sick to death of being lied to by everyone. I want to know the truth about what happened."

"It's not my truth to tell," Snow replies, her eyes flickering over towards David. He's put his newspaper down, and his arms are across his chest.

"Ma said the same thing. She said that it was mom's story to tell. But we all know she will never tell me. She'll hit me – "he gestures to the dark bruise on his cheekbone – "and she'll cry in my arms, but she won't be honest."

"Are you upset that she hit you?" Snow asks, her head cocked to the side.

"No," he replies. "Because at least it was a real reaction instead of all this bullshit where she tries to smile at me and pretend she's just fine."

"Maybe after all that she's been through, maybe that's what she needs to believe," David states. " Have you considered that? You mean the world to her, Henry, and the very last thing that Regina wants is for you to have to take care of her. She doesn't want you to look at her like she's broken."

"She _is_ broken," he insists, his hands balling into fists.

"No," Snow replies immediately, more adamantly than she would have thought humanly possible. "As the one person in this whole family who has known Regina the longest, I know what broken looks like, and believe it or not, Henry, this isn't it. She may not realize it, but she's still fighting, and her wanting to protect you from the truth? That's her best way of doing it."

"But I don't need it, anymore. I can be the strong one for her. I can protect _her_ now," he says, his eyes full of emotion. "But not if I don't know."

"I'm sorry," Snow says. "But I won't."

Henry shakes his head. "I don't get it. When it was important not to say anything, you did and her fiancée died, and now when you should say something that I can help my mother get better, you won't."

"Henry," David says sharply, his blue eyes ferocious. "Not okay."

There's a moment when Henry looks from his grandmother to his grandfather, and he sees the anger in David's eyes and the hurt in Snow's and then everything sags away from him. "I didn't mean that," he whispers. "I…I'm sorry, too. I just…I want to do something right now. I need to do something to make this okay for her. I need to do something to make that look she had in her eyes last night go away." He runs his fingers through his hair, his face suddenly becoming years younger and older simultaneously.

"I know," Snow says, reaching out to touch his forearm. "But that's where you have to trust Emma. She knows what Regina went through, and she's there for her. And even now, she knows how to get Regina talking."

Henry's head snaps up. "How does she know?"

"Excuse me?"

"How do my ma knows what my mom went through?"

"She told us some of what happened," Snow replies, but unfortunately for her, she's a terrible liar and there's a slight tick to her cheek that the son of a bounty hunter and a queen doesn't fail to see. That she hadn't completely lied is irrelevant; Henry can tell that there's so much more to this story.

"Right," Henry nods and then he smiles. "Then my mom will handle it."

It's too damned easy, and both Snow and David know it.

"Henry," David tries again.

"It's cool. I'm really hungry, though so maybe some bacon and eggs?" He smiles up at Snow when he says this, his most impish grin on his lips.

And she knows that absolutely no good will come of this.

She figures that once Henry leaves, she'll call Emma and give her a heads up. And she'll try to reassure Regina that for once, she hadn't said anything.

The problem is: she's afraid that she actually has.

* * *

They get all the way down to the docks before Regina's injured leg cramps up badly, and before she can stop herself – or Emma can catch her - she collapses to the wood planks, her hand settled over the offending muscle.

"Can I help?" Emma asks, standing just a few inches away from her, a hand still outstretched as if try and help Regina stay on her feet.

"No," Regina replies shortly. "It's just a simple cramp, and well, suffice it to say, I've gotten pretty good at dealing with these over the last few years."

"Okay." Emma takes a final step towards Regina and then kneels down next to her, her hands settled atop her cotton-covered knees, earning a curious look from the older woman. "Just in case anyone wanders by," she explains.

"Because the two of us sitting on the ground won't look strange?" Regina queries, looking up at Emma with an expression of bland disbelief.

"We're who we are and instead of arguing with each other or trying to defeat each other, we're out on a morning run together," Emma replies with a far too amused smirk. "That's already strange as it. I figured maybe you could do without anyone rubbernecking you, though, yeah?" She'd almost called them by their given labels – Savior and Evil Queen – but Regina's strong reaction to being called that before had stilled her tongue.

"Indeed," Regina sighs, grimacing as she continues to gently rub out the cramped muscle. She gratefully accepts a plastic bottle of spring water from Emma and downs several gulps from it before handing it back to the sheriff.

"So," Emma says after a few moments of just watching the deep knuckling patterns Regina is utilizing to rub out the cramp "I think we should talk."

"Aren't we?"

"About Henry."

Immediately, Regina tenses up. It's a familiar reaction, and though Emma continues to be thankful about seeing signs of the old Regina, the doubt, fear and suspicion are things she could do without. "What about him?"

"You know he's going to want more than ever to know what happened."

"I do, and more than ever now, I'd think you would understand why he can't know," Regina replies. "It's already bad enough that I struck my son while he was trying to comfort me," her face contorts in an expression of brutal remorse and self-loathing when she says this before she continues on with, "But I refuse to allow him to have the same visuals in his mind that you now have in yours." She meets Emma's eyes, daring her to refute her words.

"So you know."

"Depends on what you think I know, dear."

Emma chuckles. "You know that I know…some of what happened to you."

"From what I told you or from what you found out from my files which you illegally obtained," Regina asks, lifting up an eyebrow in accusation.

"Truthfully?"

"Always preferable. And yes, I'm aware of how ironic that is coming from me," Regina replies, smiling in a way that is coldly self-depreciating.

Emma sighs. "You're right; I did get your files illegally. Well, kind of. Your police record was shareable between agencies once the right paperwork was sent over, and even though Storybrooke doesn't exist on a map, my credentials actually do thanks to the few months we were visible to the world. All I had to do was ask the right person who wouldn't ask the wrong questions about why I'd want information on a seven year old cold case that had apparently stumped everyone who had touched it or even looked at it."

"What other file did you get?"

"Your medical one. That one, well that one I called in some favors on."

"Illegal favors," Regina reminds her, just to be petty because honestly at this point, legalities between the two of them are just useless words. She's a woman who burned entire villages to the ground, and though Emma doesn't have blood on her hands, she's hardly lived a life between the narrow lines.

"Yes."

"What about my psychiatric one? Did you call in favors there, too?"

"No. And I didn't even request it. After I found out about the memory loss, I asked for the files so that I could find out what done to you in order to help you, but I think we all learned our lesson awhile ago about you and shrinks."

"Said as righteously and as delicately as ever," Regina replies. "And I would argue, Sheriff, that the bridge of ethical morality that you are attempting to stand on is questionable at best. You illegally gathered information on my past that I might not have wanted you to see. Information I haven't seen."

"I was about to ask you about that, but I guess I should apologize first."

"For invading my privacy?" Regina asks with a lift of an eyebrow.

"Yes."

"Don't bother," Regina says with a wave of her free hand. "It's oddly endearing and rather nice to know someone cares enough to do so."

"Wow."

"Yes, I know; everyone thinks that what happened to me broke me, and it did, but apparently it also made me something of a simpering fool who is even willing to put up with your babble and half-assed good intentions."

"I think that was something of a compliment. Maybe."

"Close enough," Regina chuckles. She reaches out to the metal rail, and with a gentle hand under her elbow from Emma, pulls herself back up to her feet. Absent her cane, the walk back to the townhouse will be slow, but she'd be lying if she were to say that she doesn't welcome the crisp air in her lungs.

Because she can still remember the stale air of her dark little jail cell.

"So," Emma starts again. "You never saw your own police file?"

"Nor my medical one. At the point when I woke up, all I knew was that I'd been hurt badly; the marks were still all over my face and body. When I finally started remembering who I was and what I'd been through, the very last thing I wanted to see were the clinical explanations for everything that had been done to me. Somehow the term 'deep laceration' when used to explain numerous whip marks is both insufficient and far too much."

"There were pictures," Emma says quietly. "Color pictures."

Regina's head shoots up, her dark eyes wide. "Did you look at them?"

"No. The words were like you said…far too much. And more than enough. I think actually seeing the damage done would have been…"

"Believe me, I know. And thank you." She leans towards the railing and stares out at the choppy ocean water. "As a Queen, I led my troops into battle on numerous occasions, and I suffered more than a few injuries along the way, but even though healing was never an art I was well versed in, I was always able to magic my wounds away with a wave of my hand."

"How does that work? Self-healing?"

"I take it you haven't stayed current with your own magical studies?"

"I wasn't going to let Gold teach me, and well, things have been quiet."

"Until I returned," Regina sighs. "In answer to your question, self healing is essentially moving energy around. You heal a cut and have a stomach ache."

"So when they say all magic comes with a price…"

"They mean it."

"But you still can't feel anything?"

Regina wiggles her fingers. "Not yet."

"And if you could, could you heal your leg? Or any of your injuries?"

"I don't know. Perhaps a bit, but not completely. Some of my injures are just too deep, and the price would be significant and likely a poor trade-off."

"What about the scars? Would you remove those?"

Regina shrugs her shoulders as her eyes catch on a buoy that's bouncing around in the middle of the water. "Before what happened…happened, I had quite a bit of money stored away in accounts that I had created early on in the curse as an escape hatch for myself, and those accounts allowed me to buy the condo, and live comfortably, but after awhile, I got bored. It's the same reason I started doing actual Mayoral things in Storybrooke."

"Okay," Emma say quietly once Regina falls silent. She waits then, because though she can't for the life of her figure out where Regina is going with this little story of hers, she has a feeling that it is leading to something that will likely leave her breathless and feeling like she's been gut-punched.

"About two years after I escaped – was released, whatever we end up finding out - I decided to open up a little high-end accounting business in Bangor. I've always been exceptionally good with numbers, and it seemed like an easy way to waste time and keep myself busy. Sometimes the job took me to other places to meet with new and old clients. That's why I was in Boston when I saw Henry. Anyway, during one of my very first trips out of the city, I was staying at a really nice hotel. I remember coming out of a lovely hot shower, and I happened to catch my reflection in the mirror." She suddenly drops her head down and looks at her palms, her right hand reaching out to draw thoughtful lines across the soft supple flesh of the left.

"Regina?"

"I didn't have any mirrors in my own condo," Regina explains, not looking up. "Nothing besides a pocket mirror to help me put makeup on. I had forgotten what my back looked like. I'd forgotten the scars." Her voice is just barely more than a shuddering whisper, and she's practically trembling.

"But scars get better," Emma says quietly, experiencing speaking for her.

"Do they? I'm not sure the change in color from bright red to dull white makes them better because every time I see them, even though I can't remember my first Christmas with Henry, I can vividly recall the very first time that my captors strapped me to a wall with chains. I can still hear _her_ reminding me that I'd done this to many of my own subjects, and hadn't I ever wondered what it felt like to be on this side of things. And you know what? I hadn't." She shoves her hands into her pockets. "Now I know. So in answer to your question about if I'd use magic to remove my own scars, the answer is no because I don't have the right to remove them."

Emma bites her lip to stop herself from responding with anything that might sound like pity; she'd already known about the whip marks, of course. Both the medical and police files had been repeated reference to the generous new and old scarring that had – and apparently still does – littered the queen's far too frail body. There'd been one in particular that had chilled her to the bone. Something about a mark across one of Regina's breast.

"Regina," she says, deciding to ask about what that particular thought evokes in her mind. "You're aware that when you were found, you were wandering through the middle of a busy street buck ass naked, right?"

"I was told about how I was found, of course. If you're going to ask if it meant anything to me, well then the answer is yes. And also no. I don't remember past what I already told you and your parents about my escape, but that I emerged nude isn't surprising to me. Nor is the fact that I was found without any hair. For all of the unthinkably cruel things that they did to me to make me bleed, some of the very worst of things were done to me without so much as a drop of blood falling. They touched me liberally and unapologetically, routinely left me tied naked to stretchers so that I could be leered at by dirty men, and they shaved all of my hair off every single time it returned to it previous length. These were all efforts to humiliate and dehumanize me. Both were things I'd done to others as the Evil Queen."

"That doesn't make what happened to you all right."

"An eye for an eye."

"But you said you didn't know who their Queen was. What makes you think that you owed her this eye?"

"The funny thing is I'm fairly certain that I don't personally owe her. She knew of me and of the many horrific things that I'd done as the Evil Queen, but I don't think that I was the one that caused her hatred of magic."

"Which means that even if – and I don't believe it – this was justified for what you did to people while you were the Queen, she wasn't the one who had a right to do to you what was done. She had no right to vengeance."

"Which was likely irrelevant to her," Regina shrugs. "Besides, I never got the impression that she was in this for personal vengeance. She wanted to break me because of who I was, but she also wanted something else from me."

"And now they're back."

"Indeed."

"Which brings us back to Henry."

"And my answer hasn't changed. Just because you know doesn't mean he ever can. I don't know how I could look him in the eye if he knew the truth."

"About your scars?"

"About one in particular. How much detail was in my medical file?"

Emma thinks for a moment, running over the details in her mind anew. "I presume you're talking about the one that was mentioned as being on the underside of your left forearm? The one that looked like the letters –"

"H and E. And you never looked at the pictures?"

"No," Emma says again, frowning as she again confirms her previous words.

"Right. Well then, I suppose you get to hear this from me, and maybe once you have, you'll understand. Not all of my scars were inflicted upon me by the Home Office goons. One, I carved into myself with a shard of glass that I'd found on the floor of the lab after one of my…sessions." She rolls up the sleeve of her sweatshirt – and it occurs to Emma then that she hasn't seen Regina not wearing sleeves since the woman had come back into her life – and then turns her left arm over so as to reveal the soft flesh there.

Flesh, which has been cut into it.

Flesh, which has the letters H and E carved jaggedly into it.

"That's as far as I was able to get before they saw what I was doing. You'd think they would have loved the idea of me hurting myself, but she was actually furious with me." Regina runs the tip of her finger over the H.

"Why were you carving Henry's name into your arm?"

"Because I was starting to forget him. By the time I was, my mind was starting to scramble badly. I'd been put through dozens if not far more than that of electroshock treatments, and there were days that they could have told me that I was Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood and I would have believed them without question. Henry was my anchor. He was there, Emma, for every single torture session." She shakes her head in disgust. "How horrible is that? I needed my son to make me strong enough to endure torture. I made him witness it so that I didn't have to be alone."

Emma stares at Regina for a long moment, trying to figure out how to deal with guilt brought on by fake Henry having witnessed something real Henry hadn't. She takes in the flexing of the former queen's jaw, the way she's gazing out at the water, and how her hands are moving within her pockets.

"Regina, holding on to what is good and pure and safe in your life when you need it the very most doesn't make you a bad person," Emma finally says, desperately wanting to put her hand out so to steady Regina, but choosing not to as she somehow understands that Regina is far too lost in her own broken past right now to be appreciative of such physical contact.

"No," Regina agrees. "Everything else that I've done makes me that."

"Do you really believe that you deserve what happened to you in there?"

"Yes," Regina says simply. "I do."

"Because of what you did as the Queen?"

"Because I _was_ the Queen, Emma. And even if you can look at me and say that you didn't know that woman, you know that my very last action in Storybrooke before Greg and Tamara abducted me was to obtain a magical trigger that would murder everyone in this town. Including you, my dear."

"But then you told Hook how to disarm it."

"Coming to my senses after five rounds of electrocution doesn't absolve me of the crime. Or of the deaths that followed my disappearance." She meets Emma's eyes when she says this. "Because of me, Henry lost his father."

"A man he barely knew. I mourn what they might have one day been to each other, but they weren't that yet. What he lost with you meant far more to him than losing Neal did," Emma reminds her. "But either way, Neal went out saving my life, and you're not to blame for what the Home Office did."

"Really? I'm not?"

"No, you're not. They may have used Greg's vendetta against you –"

"I vendetta I created."

"You did," Emma agrees. "But that doesn't justify what he did. As for the Home Office, well they used Greg to find a way into Storybrooke. From the moment that I broke your curse, they were looking for us. They were always eventually going to find this town, and for whatever reason, they always wanted to destroy everyone inside of it. That's on them and not you. "

"You're incredibly magnanimous, Emma, but tell me, what would you have done if I hadn't been abducted. If you had come across me with the trigger in hand and I'd been seconds away from killing everyone, what then?"

"I would have tried to talk you down."

"We weren't talking very well back then," Regina reminds her. "You likely would have failed, and everyone would have ended up dead."

"You never know; I've always had a way with you," Emma replies.

"You continue to think entirely too highly of yourself," Regina retorts, but she's smiling just a bit, looking almost fond of the presumptuous sheriff.

"Yeah, probably. In any case, that we weren't communicating very well back then, well that's on both of us. But the past – that part, anyway – is the past and it should stay there. For better or for worse, I've chosen to let it go and move on. So has Henry, and so have my parents. Now it's your turn."

"Oh, but I have," Regina says softly. "The only thing I haven't let go of is the blood on my hands. Every time I look down, I see it. I owe that much."

"And where has owing gotten you? You could have come back home to us years ago. You could have returned to our son before his first kiss."

Regina doesn't answer that, can't possibly begin to answer it.

And then before Emma can push her to, the sheriff's cell rings. She gives Regina a "saved by the bell" kind of look and then pulls her phone out. A quick glances shows that it's her mother calling. "Hey," she says as she answers it and presses the phone up against her ear. "What's up?"

"It's Henry," Snow says, and she sounds worried enough to put Emma on edge. Worried enough to tell her that this is something she should probably pay attention. "He came over to the loft this morning demanding answers."

"And I assume you didn't give him any?" Emma queries, glancing over at Regina who is now starring at her with her dark brows knit together in worry. It makes the former queen look so much older, so much more frail.

"Of course not," Snow replies immediately, almost urgently. "But I think he may have derived from what I tried not to say that you might know more than I do, and that you might have come upon that information…

"Illegally?" Emma offers up.

"Something like that. Either way, Henry might be looking for something that Regina would probably prefer he didn't see."

"Gotcha. Thanks, Mom," Emma says.

"Of course. Emma, how is she?"

Emma glances back over at Regina, then asks with a grin, "How are you?"

Regina laughs because it's so uniquely an Emma Swan kind of move. "Tell your mother that I'm fine. It takes more than a nightmare to take me down."

"You hear that?" Emma asks into the phone.

"I did. If it's all right with the two of you, we'll be by this evening for dinner; I figure maybe we can try doing one tonight with a little less excitement."

"Sounds good. And hey, thanks for the heads up."

"Tell her I didn't say anything. I swear I didn't."

"Don't worry; we know," Emma says kindly. "Bye." She hangs up the phone, pockets it and then turns to Regina and sighs. "Our kid is a little shit."

"You're going to need to elaborate," Regina replies dryly.

"Of course," Emma nods. "Our kid is a smart little shit who doesn't listen to directions or really anything at all and doesn't know how to leave well enough alone. I'm pretty sure he takes after both of us in that regard."

"Meaning what?" Regina asks, dread sweeping through her.

"Meaning he went over to see my mother, and though she didn't tell him anything, he may have put together how I found out some things because he's helped me out with a few data gathering jobs in the past. He knows what kind of information I have the ability to get my hands on."

Regina reacts immediately, her eyes widening and the color running from her cheeks as she stammers out, "He knows about the files?"

"No, but I think he suspects that something exists, though. We should probably get back to the house and try to stop him in his tracks. Right now, he doesn't know what he's looking for so I think we have time, but well…"

"He's a smart little shit," Regina repeats to herself under her breath.

Emma can't help but laugh. Because even though this could end up being a very ugly situation, it'll never fail to be funny to hear Regina curse.

Of course, her mirth earns a sharp look of reproach.

"Sorry," she mutters. "You think you're ready for the trip back?" She glances down at the leg that Regina is still absently rubbing at.

"Yes, I think so, but we'll need to move slowly," Regina says, even though she wants to run as fast as she possibly can to ensure that Henry doesn't have a chance to see the information.

"Yeah, sure. You know maybe magic can't help your leg, but perhaps Whale can? In many ways he's better than some of the doctors on the outside."

"No," Regina says shortly. "Not Victor."

"Is this about your old world issues with him?"

"It's about knowing that I don't want him touching me. Never again," she says cryptically, and then a strange look of confusion crosses her face for a moment before she shakes it off and asks, "Where are they? The files?" As she says this, she takes a step forward as if to move back towards the pier that will return them to the house. Emma's arm slides around her waist just before she stumbles, and she allows the contact because she knows in that moment that she's too sore and scared to be as strong as she needs to.

"On my laptop in my office back at the townhouse."

"Would he check there first?"

"I have it password locked so he's more likely to check my desk drawers, and anything else that requires minimal effort. He knows how to hack –"

"A vital skill all young men should know," Regina snorts derisively.

Emma chuckles. "It has its uses believe it or not."

"We'll let's hope it doesn't have one this afternoon."

The two women exchange a look, and Emma sees the absolute terror on Regina's face, the fear that their son could be just seconds away from discovering the dark secrets that Regina herself hasn't yet fully confronted.

So Emma moves faster.

Unfortunately for everyone, they're still too late.

**TBC…**

**Tumblr account is sgtmac7.**


	10. 9

**A/N: **Thanks as always.

_Warnings:_ Discussion of torture, extreme violence (at the very end of the chapter), some language and some tears.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

Regina is in absolute agony as they reach Emma's townhouse, her bad leg and hip screaming at her that she has to stop moving right now because her body simply can't endure this kind of constant high impact activity. While she and the sheriff had left the docks moving slowly but steadily, they had both rapidly increased their pace until it had become a near full steam ahead run, and now Regina is paying the price of this sense of urgency.

She doesn't care, though, because the price of not getting to Henry in time to stop him from seeing and reading things that he doesn't need to is far higher than the one she will pay because -

There's a horrible crashing sound that echoes through the townhouse just about half of a second after Emma and Regina tear through the front door; it sounds like something has been thrown and immediately, the two women know that their twenty-two year old son is somehow involved in this.

Which means –

_Oh, God no._

_Please, no._

Moving together, they tear through the kitchen and down the hall to where Emma's office is, and then they just both stop in the open doorway and stare almost stupidly ahead because the room looks like some kind of bomb has gone off in it. Every cabinet has been yanked out and has been left hanging that way, and there are papers scattered in every which direction.

And then there's Henry.

He's standing in the middle of the room, his head down as he stares at the shattered remains of Emma's laptop (she only allows herself a few seconds of anger over this because there are bigger issues right now). His shoulders are shaking and he's breathing rapidly and harshly, like he can't quite figure out how to pull oxygen into his burning lungs. His hands are clenching and unclenching rapidly, his blunt fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms.

"Henry," Emma says first, her voice low as she tries to be calm and steady.

Because right now, someone has to be.

Henry simply shakes his head, but he doesn't look up. His eyes never leave the laptop, and though it's powered down now – perhaps forever, Emma grouses to herself before again shaking the thoughts away – it's like he can still see whatever it was that was on the screen. It's like he's still staring right at whatever awful image had caused him to have such a violent and terrible reaction. Emma has a few guesses, and none of them are very good.

"What did you do?" Regina whispers, and that's when Emma notices that the former queen's suddenly ferociously dark eyes are on the laptop, too.

Like she, too, knows.

"I just wanted to know the truth," Henry finally mumbles out, and he sounds so very strange and distant, like he's not quite in this moment of reality with his two mothers. He shakes his head again and Emma gets the feeling that he's trying to find a way to un-see something he shouldn't have seen at all.

But it's that old line about a rung bell and if what has happened is what they all believe has happened, well then there's no un-ringing this one.

If Henry has seen the files, then they'll have to find a way to deal with this.

Emma tries again, tries to get to the truth. "Henry, tell me you didn't –"

His head shoots up and he looks at Emma with his eyes full of unshed tears that seem to be weighing down his eyelashes. "Tell you I didn't go through your laptop? But we both know that I did." He gestures wildly around the office. "I checked everywhere else first, but I knew where it was. Because they wouldn't have mailed you the files. They couldn't have, right? Nothing has gotten in or out of this town besides mom in ten years. And I knew you wouldn't have printed them out because you didn't want me to see them."

"Henry," Emma says, as she glances quickly over at Regina and sees the horrified realization that is dawning on the former queen's face as she understands just how much he' seen, and how much it's affected him.

He gestures at the broken computer. "I didn't want to see them, either."

"Then why did you look?" Regina demands, stepping towards him. She winces for a brief moment as her hip protests the sharp movement, but then she's up in his face, a hand on each of his cheeks in a way that is half tender and half intense. Her fingers are pressing hard into his pale skin, and it's like she's trying to ground herself before all of this just sweeps her away again.

"You were hurting," he says weakly, his eyes locking with her as tears trickle out. "I didn't want to see it, but I had to because you needed me."

"Oh, Henry. Not like this, my sweet little prince," Regina whispers. She suddenly looks so much older – and she already looks her biological age in a way that Emma is still not terribly comfortable with – than she is.

And so very tired and scared.

"You needed me," he says again, and then closes his eyes tight like he's trying to find a way to force the visuals behind his eyelids to just go away.

"Henry, what did you see?" Emma asks, and she sees Regina flinch because that's the very last question that she had wanted Emma to ask their son.

It's necessary, of course, because no one can be helped not without the truth, but perhaps Regina had been hoping that they could just ignore the debris scattered everywhere around the office.

Maybe she had been hoping that they could just not talk about it, and she could find a way to pretend that Henry doesn't know the truth.

But that's not how this is going to play out, Emma thinks, because Henry is wide-eyed, and he looks haunted in a way that no twenty-two year old boy should ever look, and if Regina wasn't so damned terrified herself right now, she'd realize that they've crossed the point of no return with hiding what's happened to her away. Henry knows something, and it's time to talk.

Though it curdles her stomach, Emma suddenly wishes that she had looked at the pictures – not because she had ever wanted to see the actual physical damage done to the former queen – but so at least she could understand.

So at least she could understand the images flashing through his mind now.

But she can't and so she waits for him.

And waits.

Until he looks up at Regina and swallows hard like he has a rock in his throat before asking in a broken voice, "Do you still have them all on your back?"

"Henry," she gasps out, and it's a desperate plea for him to stop. Now she's the one who is clenching her hands, like she's trying to fight for strength.

"And on your arms? Are there still burn marks on your legs, mom? What about on the soles of your feet? Have those healed yet?" His face contorts into something awful because he's clearly seeing everything all over again.

And so is Regina judging by devastated look on her suddenly far too pale face. She doesn't look angry. No, she looks heartbroken, like she thinks that the truth will take away everything that coming back home returned to her.

"Kid," Emma pleads because she quite suddenly wants to try to stop this conversation from happening almost as badly as Regina does. She wants to halt it this vicious discussion in its terrible and sure to be bloody and soul crushing tracks before both mother and son come completely apart.

He looks over at Emma, and his eyes are more green than she's ever seen them before and he's just staring at her like he's begging her to make everything he's seen just go away. Like he wants her to have somehow made him listen to her. That's not possible, though, and he finally looks back over towards the woman who had raised, loved and protected him for the first ten almost eleven years of his life. "Momma," he says softly, and he's addressing Regina in such a soft and pained voice that it physically hurts.

"_Please_. Please, I can't do this," Regina says, and it's unclear what she's referring to, but she's almost trembling now, and her usually dark but somehow still bright eyes have completely fogged over. They look dull and unfocused and she's swaying on her feet almost like she's drunk on something. Down by her side, her left hand scratches absently at the right.

And Emma suddenly remembers a quick fleeting notation in the medical intake file about how Regina's hands had both been cut dozens and dozens of times. Small little cuts no deeper than the kind that would be made by an accidental nick from a kitchen knife. Just deep enough to sting and ache.

She wonders if there are still scars there, too.

"I don't understand," Henry says, nearly shaking with anger and so many other emotions that he can't put into words. His eyes are completely back on Regina now as he says, "Who does something like this to a person?"

"I'm not a person," Regina tells him dully. "I'm the Evil Queen."

It's not the answer he'd been expecting. Perhaps he'd been thinking he would get something about bad people who do bad thing. Instead, he gets his first real look at the bottomless pit of self-loathing within his mother.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Henry snaps back at her, his lips curling into a furious sneer. The angry look isn't directed at her, but rather at her comment. "Is who you were five decades ago supposed to justify what they did to you?" Tears leak down his face in watery streams and he wipes angrily at them. "Is what you were supposed to make that they…that they…" he stops suddenly and turns away from his mothers, his fist going to his mouth to keep him from saying words that he can't pull back.

"Henry," Regina tries again.

"Stop saying my name! Stop trying to placate me like I'm an idiot child."

She looks at him with wide hurt eyes, like she can't understand why he's so angry with her, like she can't possibly figure out what she's done this time to bring on his rage at her. "I'm sorry," she says as starts to step away, her head lowered in a way that neither Emma nor Henry has ever seen before.

Before she can get even an inch away from him, Henry steps in her way. "Mom, no. Don't you get it? You're not the Evil Queen to me; you're my mother. That's the only title that means anything to me. I don't care who you were once upon a time; I only care that they hurt you," Henry tells her.

"You weren't supposed to know about any of that," she says because there's nothing else she can say to explain to him why the Home Office had hurt her as badly as they had; even believing that through her own evil actions she has brought on all of the punishment that she has received in life, she doesn't understand why they didn't just kill her and be done with it.

She doesn't understand why they broke her and then did it over and over again. Like it was all just some kind of game instead of true punishment.

But whether they had intended it to be or not, it _had_ been punishment, and she can suddenly feel the scars on the bottoms of both of her feet, thicker on the left one. They'd used dollar store lighters to burn her, foregoing expensive technology in order to cause her an excruciating amount of pain.

That unwanted memory had returned to her one frigid January evening a few years ago when she'd been trying to start a fire for herself in order to help keep her too think body warm during a cold snap. Ever since that night, the sight of flames of any kind has caused panic to surge within her.

"But I do know," Henry explodes again, his face bright red. "I do." He takes a step towards his mother, then, his hand reached out to her as if he wants to try to touch her and make this better, but for whatever reason – perhaps it's the almost pitying look in his eyes, the way he seems to see a victim now – she pulls back and away from him before he can make contact with her.

"Okay, we need to step back," Emma interjects almost immediately. Her eyes are on Henry, and she sees the stricken look on his face. A look towards Regina shows something almost skittish about her – something that Emma knows she wants to steer Henry well clear off. "And take a deep breath." She looks at Henry. "Go get some air, kid. Nothing good will come out of trying to have this discussion when you're both as upset as you are."

But Henry's not listening, not hearing a word she's saying. Instead, he's trying to figure out why his mother is suddenly pulling away from him after having spent the previous night clinging to him. "Did I do something wrong?" he asks, again approaching Regina. "Do you hate me because I know what happened?" he sounds so young and devastatingly innocent.

"It's impossible to hate _you_," Regina tells him. What she doesn't say to him is clear, though; that she hates herself instead is written in bold across her face. "You are the only reason that I'm alive today," she whispers out.

He shakes his head like he doesn't understand, and Emma knows that she really does need to stop this because Regina is crumbling and her ability to keep the secrets inside of her isn't near as strong as it once was.

Emma knows that Regina doesn't want their son knowing about how she'd created a mental companion of Henry to hold her through her nightmare, but if this goes on much longer, he will know, and then God only knows what will happen once Henry realizes that the mother that he'd always felt like he'd let down had never stopped believing in his ability to make her strong. That's too much weight for a kid – even a twenty-two year old one.

"Okay, enough," Emma states, her voice firm. She puts a hand lightly on Henry's shoulder. "Go take a walk, kid. I'm going to clean up, and Regina is going to go lie down –" her eyes flicker over to see if Regina is about to protest, but the former queen is just gazing at the wall, her eyes glassy with physical and emotional pain that Emma can't even guess at – "And we will try to deal with all of this later. When we have all calmed down a little bit."

"Fine," Henry replies, his hands jamming roughly into his pockets. He looks back over at Regina and his green eyes seem to sweep over her – like he's recalling what he'd seen in those horrible color pictures in her medical file.

"And then later," Emma continues, her tone a little bit harder and her eyes a bit more intense as she stares him down. "Maybe the two of us can talk about respecting someone's privacy. And don't even start on the bullshit about reminding me what I do for a living. You know that this is different."

He blinks slowly, and she sees tears there because yeah, he does know.

And he probably wishes he hadn't looked as much as they wish it.

But he had and now both mother and son are fighting for solid ground.

"Go," Emma prompts gently.

He nods and starts for the door of the office, but before he can get too far away, Regina – who'd seemed to have completely drifted away for a few moments, disappearing into the torments of her own mind – reaches out for him and wraps a small hand around his wrist. "I love you," she tells him.

And really, that's all that matters.

He takes a tentative step forward and then into her arms, and though she quite clearly hadn't wanted Henry to touch her earlier for whatever reason, those reasons are long gone for now and she's holding her son as tightly as she can and she's letting him hold her and Emma lets out a long breath.

It's not better, but it's not worse.

Not yet.

* * *

"What happened?" Snow asks as she and David step inside the townhouse.

"You were right," Emma replies with a grunt and then a loud sigh. "Henry figured out that I'd done some research, and he knew exactly where to look to find it." She indicates towards the shattered laptop, which sits rather miserably on the kitchen table. "That sucker cost me almost two grand. Kid destroyed it in twenty seconds. Maybe ten."

"Well, he is your son," David says absently as he touched the bent aluminum.

"Meaning what?"

"You break a lot of things," Snow replies with a shrug. "What did he see?"

"Everything, unfortunately. Even the things I refused to look at." Emma sighs loudly. "There were pictures in there. The ones they took when she was first brought into the hospital. They showed every injury that she had."

"They were bad?" David asks.

"I never looked at them so I don't know, but considering what I read in that file, I would say that they were. She has scars everywhere, dad. Some of them are pretty deep and some of them are awful just because of where they are. And some…some of them tell you exactly what was done to her." Emma shakes her head. "He's having a hard time dealing with that. So am I. So is Regina. Obviously." Emma looks towards the stairs when Snow glances around as if to find the former queen. "She took a couple of painkillers about a half hour ago; I think she'll be down for awhile."

Snow follows her eyes towards the stairs, and it occurs to her that she's done this a couple times over the last few weeks. Many years ago, looking upwards for Regina would have been done with a sense of trepidation as she'd been awaiting one of her former stepmother's grand entrances, but so very much has changed now and the woman upstairs isn't about to sweep into the room declaring her intent to destroy everyone's happiness.

The woman upstairs doesn't have a clue what happiness is anymore.

Well, Snow thinks, that's going to change. Even if it takes another ten years to make it happen, she'll find a way to make Regina understand that she doesn't have to look into the mirror and see the monster there anymore.

She can be happy and they can do this together.

As family always should do.

"You mind if I go up?" Snow asks. "I'd just like to sit with her for a little bit."

Emma's eyebrow lifts for a moment in surprise, but then she shrugs her shoulders. "Course not, but I'm not sure how much conversation she'll be if the painkillers have already kicked in."

"That's okay." She looks over at David and he smiles at her as if to say go ahead. To Emma, she asks, "Henry went out for a walk, right?"

"Yeah. He needed some fresh air. I wouldn't expect to see him for awhile."

"That's good," Snow says, and she sounds so very serious. She nods at her husband and then turns and heads up the stairs towards Henry's bedroom, her footsteps soft.

"There's something new that I'm not going to like, I take it?" Emma asks.

"Yeah," David sighs as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell. It's an older model, and the camera on it is fairly pathetic (the down side of having been pretty much trapped in a town where Gold's magic had been used to supply most of the inventory of both food and supplies for almost ten years; both Henry and Emma have brought things back from their many trips to the outside world, but technology here is still quite dated for the most part, and that's unlikely to ever really change), but the picture he shows her is still clear enough to make it.

It's more graffiti. Red spray paint of some kind.

"Check," Emma reads. She scowls. "Seriously? A chess reference?"

"I'm thinking that maybe this is in reference to the Queen," David notes. "Maybe they figure that even though Regina is back with us, they've still taken her out."

"I don't get this at all," Emma replies, still looking at his phone. "In chess, the most powerful piece in the game is always the queen so if you want to take her off the board, why give her back to us? I get playing with us, but this just doesn't make any sense at all. And now they're taunting us?"

"They didn't get what they wanted from her," David says simply. "After three years of doing whatever they could to her, they still couldn't get it."

"I'm guessing that we're both still believing that this probably has something to do with the magic that Regina has inside of her, yeah?"

"Even if she can't remember how to access it, Gold insists it's still in there. He says she should needs the right motivation to be able to tap back into it."

"So maybe the only way that these Home Offices sons of bitches can get to Regina's magic is if she's back here in Storybrooke where it's more than just elemental, it might actually even be active again," Emma says in an almost excited tone, finishing the unhappy thought that they've both been having.

Like father, like daughter apparently.

"Exactly," David confirms, sounding like he wishes that they were wrong.

"I hate your theory," Emma grumbles.

David smiles in understanding, and then lightly nudges her shoulder with his own, affection shining brightly in his blue eyes. "Me, too," he admits.

* * *

Regina isn't at all restless in her sleep. Right now, drugged almost completely up, she isn't really anything besides entirely too still for Snow's liking. It reminds her rather uncomfortably of her former stepmother's early days in the castle. It recalls for her how Regina had moved so quietly down every hallway. Her motions had been reserved and tuned. She had been trying not to be noticed, and she had mostly succeeded in that.

Over time, though, that stillness had given away to a kind of strange madness that had come over Regina. Not everyone had seen it, of course, but Snow had. Even a selfish girl who struggled to ever see the world as it turned outside of her own needs, Snow had noticed Regina's darkening.

She just hadn't recognized it for what it was until it had been far too late.

Regina had gone from still to furious, from quiet to thundering.

Oh, but that's all in the past now, Snow thinks as she pulls a chair up next to Regina's bed. The older woman looks fairly strange and out of place curled up in Henry's brightly colored blankets, her head rested against a striped pillow, her dark hair fanned out. She seems warm enough; perhaps even too warm judging by the light layer of perspiration around Regina's brow.

A quick trip to the bathroom, and Snow returns with a washcloth.

This is familiar, she thinks, remembering a time when she'd taken care of a wounded Regina in the woods. Then, it had all been something of a trick; a game Regina had been playing so as to get close enough to Snow to kill her.

Well, no, not completely. Regina had been wounded, of course. And perhaps, absent help from Snow that day, she would have died of infection.

Or maybe Rumplestiltskin would have come to her aide.

It hardly matters.

They've all paid enough now.

She places the cool cloth on Regina's forehead and gently dabs the sweat away, the touch so very light. "It's okay," she whispers. "You're safe now."

"Am I?" she hears.

Her eyes lift up and she sees Regina looking at her through vision made hazy by painkillers. Her head is lifted off the pillow, but her eyes are drooping, and Snow has no doubt that it won't be long before Regina succumbs to sleep again, but for now, she's staring back at her former stepdaughter with something that looks like clarity.

Something that looks like understanding of the gravity of this moment.

"You are," Snow tells her.

"You're so sure of this?"

"I know I won't let anyone hurt you again."

"Why?"

"Because you saved me, and I didn't save you."

It's an overly simplistic summary of their relationship, and for a brief moment, Regina looks like she's about to argue it, but then whatever strength had been within her sags away again and she slumps to the pillow.

"Sleep," Snow says. "I promise I'll be here when you wake up."

"It's funny," Regina comments. "I've spent so very much of my life alone, and now I'm here and everyone wants to stay with me." Her words are without recrimination, coated only in a curious kind of mystified wonder.

"We all change," Snow tells her. "I wanted you gone and out of my life for so long, but every single time that I had the chance to make that happen, I couldn't do it, Regina. It's taken me a very long time to understand why."

"And what did you come up with?" Regina asks, her words slurring.

Snow reaches out and brushes hair away from Regina's eyes, tucking it behind her ear. "I love you, Regina. I always will. We're family even when we hate each other, and we will always be family. I was never willing to let go of you because I always hoped that one day, we could forgive each other."

"And have you? Forgiven me?" Regina asks, rolling her head so that their eyes are meeting. Her own are cloudy, but she's clearly fighting hard to stay conscious and lucid enough to have and understand this conversation.

"Yes. I just didn't realize it until just now." Then, quietly, sounding so very much like an uncertain and yet hopeful little girl" Have you forgiven me?"

Regina smiles at that. "Ever since I got free of them, I've been having memory flashes, but I had a few when I was there, too. One of the times they had me in insolation for…it must have been weeks, I got sick from being in such damp conditions and I start hallucinating you. At first I thought you were just like the shadows that always seemed to be around for all of my sessions with her, but you were different in that room with me. You were actually you and we…" she laughs to herself. "We argued a lot."

"Yeah? Did it help?"

Another almost amused smile, and then Regina's eyes slip closed as she whispers, "I think I finally figured out where Emma gets her stubbornness from. You were a real pain in the ass in there, wouldn't let me just die."

"Good," Snow states. "_Good_."

Regina's right hand lifts up, hangs in the air for a moment just swaying around, and then it reaches blindly out as if trying to find something to hold on to. As if finally understanding, Snow slips her own into Regina's.

"Yes," Regina says quietly. "I did. And I do."

Snow nods her head, and bites her lip to keep a sob from breaking loose, but she's only somewhat successful because she hears Regina chuckle.

"No rainbow kisses today, dear," Regina mumbles. "I just washed the car."

The words are, of course, utterly nonsensical, but they hardly matter.

All that does matter is that Regina is still holding her hand.

"Shut up and go to sleep, Regina," Snow replies, her voice rough with thick knots of emotion. "And I will be here when you wake up."

Regina responds with a light grunting sound and then drops back beneath the veil of consciousness, her body once again so very still and quiet.

Snow exhales, and then with her free hand, reaches out and starts dabbing away at the sweat gathered on Regina's brow once again.

* * *

"Hey, Henry," he hears from somewhere behind him. He's sitting on a bench in the middle of the park and has been for the last hour or so. Everything is still swimming around in his head, so very many ugly images and words. He wishes so desperately that he had listened to Emma and not pushed to know the truth about what happened to Regina, but what's done is done.

He turns his head and watches as Ruby approaches, a coffee cup in hand.

"Hey," he says with a smile. She'd been his first real crush, and though those weird teenage feelings have given away to a sense of sibling love instead, he can't help but regard her with a little bit of sadness. Because he'd been old enough to understand the heartbreak she'd gone through when she'd been betrayed by a selfish lover who'd only ever seen her as a monster.

"Saw you out here," Ruby says as she sits down next to him. She offers him the cup, and then gazes out ahead towards the water fountain in the middle of the park. It'd been put there years ago as some sort of tribute to those who had fallen in the Home Office's first attack. Somewhere on the base of it is Regina's name. It makes Henry want to throw up to even think about it.

"Needed to think," he says, tipping the cup towards her appreciatively.

"I can go," she says.

"You don't have to."

"Then I can listen."

He chuckles at that and offers her a thankful smile. "I'm sure that my grandmother has been keeping you updated on everything."

"She has," Ruby allows. "But I wanted to see how you're doing."

"Terrible," he admits between sips. "I saw her medical and police files."

"Emma showed you?"

"No."

"Oh. Henry –"

"I know. Believe me, I know."

"It was bad?" Ruby asks.

"They burned her feet," he replies, and though that's one of the very least of things that they'd done to her, for some reason it sticks in his mind.

"Right," the waitress replies, and it's like she just understand that what he's telling her is just the tip of the iceberg. She doesn't need to know more – doesn't want to know more. What she already knows is more than enough.

"And she said she deserved it because she's the Evil Queen." Henry shakes his head fiercely, angrily. "That's such…it doesn't make…did you deserve what he did to you because of what you turn into once a month?"

"It's not exactly the same thing," Ruby says. "But no, I suppose I didn't."

He turns to look at her and narrows his eyes. "What does that mean?"

"It means that sometimes you lose faith in yourself, and sometimes you start to actually believe the very worst things that people believe of you. All he did was take my blood and my DNA, but that was enough for me to understand that all I ever was to him was an animal to be experimented on."

"Ruby –"

"I know, Henry; Snow and Emma and David and everyone else tell me all the time that I'm better than that, but it's hard to believe that when you realize that the person you chose to love never loved you and never could."

"I never understood why we don't lock him up and throw away the key."

"Because I didn't want them, too," Ruby says softly.

"Why not?"

"Because he has more value outside of a cell than inside of one. He's our only doctor, Henry; it's not like we have a lot of renewable resources."

"He should have paid for what he did to you."

"He took blood and broke my heart." She smiles sadly. "No one ever made me pay for what I did to Peter. Someone made your mother pay too much."

"You're about to tell me that vengeance is bad?"

"It is, and it's not what any of us want for you." Ruby reaches out and ruffles his hair and because he's twenty-two and a man now, he scowls at her and ducks away, but she just laughs. "You're our Henry; you remind all of us of the best of ourselves. Please don't let anger change everything that's good and right inside of you. If you do, then all of us have failed you."

"I'm okay," he promises her.

"Good. Then finish the coffee and go home and be with your moms."

"Come with me."

"Not tonight."

"Ruby –"

"Another night, I promise."

"You always say that."

"I keep my promises," she assures him as she stands back up. She winks at him, and then starts to walk about, but stops when he calls her back.

"He wants to see mom. Run some tests on her. Will he hurt her?"

I wouldn't let him do it," she answers. "No matter what Victor says, there's not a real man inside of him. I'm not ever sure that there ever has been."

"Okay. You sure you won't come back with me? We can do shots."

She laughs. "Another time."

"He was a fool, Rubes," Henry says, his voice serious. "A stupid fool."

"Keep saying that, kiddo."

"Every day."

They share a smile, and then Ruby takes her hands into her pockets and walks back through the cold air towards the diner. It's starting to snow, and within an hour, Storybrooke is likely to be coated in nothing but white.

Snowfall is supposed to signify new beginnings, he thinks.

And maybe that's what this is: a new beginning for everyone.

It's as he's thinking this that his cell buzzes in his pocket. His eyes on the flakes as they start to tumble down, he answers it. "Hey, ma," he says.

"Hey, kid, you on your way home?"

"Yeah, just about."

"You okay?"

"Is she?"

"She's sleeping. Are you okay?"

"Better."

"Good."

"And I'm sorry," he says. "About not liste-"

His words cut off abruptly, and the phone drops from his hand as he slumps to the ground, face first in the now slightly snow dusted yellowed grass.

He doesn't hear his mother calling out for him.

The only thing he hears is what sounds – and feels - like his jacket and his shirt being pulled off of him and then he hears something sizzling.

And then there's an intense pain in his shoulder.

"Sorry about this," he hears, deceptively low (like his attacker – definitely a man – is trying to hide his voice) and directly in his right ear. "You're going to be okay, Henry, but she needs to find her magic. She will for you."

He doesn't ask who needs to "find her magic", doesn't really care right now.

Because Emma is still calling out for him, maybe even screaming now.

He thinks he might be screaming, too.

* * *

She jerks forward in her bed, and everything hurts but she doesn't care.

Because she never dreams when she's on the painkillers, and she's just had one horrific nightmare – the kind that she thinks that she'll never forget because it had involved Henry and him being hurt and...

"Regina," Snow says, sitting up abruptly from where she'd drowsed off.

"Henry," Regina whispers, and she's already climbing from the bed.

That's when they both hear Emma practically crying out for Henry. Begging him to hold on and promising him that she's on her way to him right now.

"Regina," Snow whispers, and she has no idea how she'll finish the sentence, but whatever she might have said simply slips away when she sees the old familiar purple gleam of magic sliding through Regina's dark eyes.

It's unsettling and terrifying, but Snow just reaches out her hand and takes Regina's and hopes and prays that she can ground her former stepmother in a way that she never had been able to do in the past.

"Take us to him," she says softly. "Take us to your son."

**TBC...**


	11. 10

**A/N:** Thanks as always.

Warnings: Some language, some non graphic discussion of torture and of course, angst.

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

The two women reappear down in the kitchen about half of a second after Regina's purple smoke covers them up. It's an unsettling feeling to be transported by magic – a rarity for Snow and a not quite welcomed memory for the former queen – but neither of them choose to think too much on this – or the sudden reappearance of Regina's magic - just yet.

Not until they know for sure that Henry is safe.

"What happened?" Regina demands sharply as they appear in between David and Emma. "Where is he?" Her eyes are practically glowing.

"Jesus Christ," Emma gasps, a hand covering her heart, and it occurs to Snow that for the last ten years or so, they've had relative peace here in Storybrooke and there just hasn't been a need for these kinds of panics.

Relative being relevant, of course, because a town full of drama loving storybook characters can never be that pleasant and happy all the time.

"Yes, I've found my magic," Regina snaps. "What happened to Henry?"

"I don't know," Emma says, shaking her head. "We were on the phone and then he wasn't and then he was screaming. Can you…bring…us to him?"

"I think so," Regina replies, and she has no real idea why she's so certain of this considering the fact that five minutes earlier she'd been completely unable to even feel magic within her much less use it. "Give me your hand."

"Emma," David says, his brow crinkling as he looks from his daughter to his wife. It's never been a secret how much he dislikes magic, and he'd be lying if he were to claim that he hasn't enjoyed the lack of it. Gold has had it, and Emma still the power within her, but there hasn't been much need for it over the last few years, and so it's been easy to forget his wariness, but now seeing the former queen's eyes bubbling with purple energy, it scares him because he doesn't want to return to the past when every day was a fight.

"It's all going to be just fine," Emma tells him even as her emotional eyes are saying otherwise. He thinks that she's trying to offer him some kind of comfort him about the magic, though, and not the Henry situation. "You two be on stand by," she says. "I'll let you know where we end up."

He nods his head, and snaps his mouth shut because now isn't the time.

Regina notices that he doesn't offer Emma any kind of empty platitude or promise of hope, and for once neither does Snow, and just as the smoke covers her and Emma and whisks them away, she thinks that perhaps she's just a little sad about how even the Charming's have lost some innocence.

But then she and Emma are standing in the park together, and Henry is lying on the snow-covered ground stripped down to only his blue jeans and his boots and there's the horrific smell of cooked flesh thick and intolerable in the air and she just knows what's happened to her little boy.

Because she can still vividly recall being strapped down on her belly to a metal table, naked to the waist. She can still hear the sizzle of the brand, and she can still smell the burning of her own flesh. She tries not to think about the pain she'd felt or the way she'd screamed until she'd passed out.

"He's alive," Emma says, exhaling her relief.

Regina barely hears her, is already scrambling towards Henry, fighting her body and her rolling stomach with every step she takes. "Henry," she gasps out. She can feel Emma right behind her, and then beside her as they both tumble down to the soft snow next to Henry's unconscious body.

That's when they both see the brand on his back. Angry and red, it has been cruelly burnt into the once flawless flesh just beneath his right shoulder.

"No," Regina whispers, because she knows that mark – that brand – well.

She has it on her right shoulder, too. She'd know since the moment they'd arrived that something like this had been done to him, but she'd been praying that they wouldn't have put this specific one on to him. Bad enough that they'd done it all, but he of all people doesn't deserve this one.

"He's going to be okay," Emma says. "Can you get us to a hospital?"

Regina looks up at her, and that's when Emma notices that the misting purple magic is completely missing now. All that remains is big brown eyes gleaming brightly with tears. This isn't anger, Emma realizes, this is fear.

"It's gone again," Regina whispers, sounding almost bewildered. Her fear getting the best of her, her hand strays out and she touches Henry's hair.

It's just as she does this that Emma grabs her wrist, and she's about to protest, thinking that Emma is about to push her away from their son (she's reminded of a time when after Emma had saved Henry from being killed in the mines, she had forced the sheriff away, and refused to allow her to take comfort in Henry's safety), but Emma has always been the better person.

"Easy," Emma whispers, her grip tightening on Regina's wrist. She slides her fingers down, intertwines them with Regina's and then lifts their hands up towards Henry's neck and presses it against his pulse point, allowing both of them to feel the way his strong heart is still hammering away in his chest.

They both exhale at the same time, and Regina nods her head in gratitude.

"He's in shock; we need to get him to the hospital," Emma says, then. "If you can't get to your magic again, we'll have to take him there by foot."

What Emma means, though, is that she herself will have to carry Henry to the hospital because they both know that Regina's body isn't nearly strong enough to be able to support any extra weight, especially that of a grown man. Regina's eyes close for a moment, and an expression of such pain and hurt creases her face as she tries to concentrate on finding the thread again.

Once upon a time, Rumplestiltskin had showed her how to find magic deep within her body, even when that magic had been trying to hide away like a shy child. He'd laughingly compared it to pulling on the tiniest edge of a loose end. With a knowing smirk that she hadn't understood back then, he'd instructed her to pull hard enough to make everything unravel into energy and chaos, which only she could then control. Those airy easy words had been something of a lie, but there's still truth to be found in the method.

She'd be lying to claim that it doesn't frighten her, though, because she knows that once she really finds and pulls forward the magic again and is able to use it even when she's not just angry, it will all be real once more, and what's to stop all of her addictions and temptations from surfacing?

What's to stop the Evil Queen from coming back?

And what's worse, why is she wondering if it would be such a bad thing for that woman – a woman she hates worse than she has ever hated Snow – to resurface now? Wouldn't the Evil Queen be able to protect Henry at least?

"Regina," Emma whispers, and it occurs to her that their hands are still connected against Henry's neck. The shared touch is warm and safe, and Henry's heart is still so strong and vibrant, and she wonders why it's always hate and anger that allows power to be grasped? Why can magic only be found in the worst of things instead of in the reassurance of life and love?

But perhaps, it can be. Perhaps, she's simply never looked for it there.

"Hang on," Regina says. She thinks about the many books she'd read long ago in another world. The ones that had spoken of white magic, she'd always tossed away because such power is inherently defensive instead of offensive, and she'd always wanted to be the hunter instead of the prey.

Now, she just needs to protect her son.

So she thinks about these books, and thinks about pages she'd scoffed at and disregarded. She thinks of magic that speaks of the beauty of the heart and now the power within in. She thinks of a boy crying out for his mother.

Light purple magic swirls around her. She feels Emma move their hands down towards Henry's, winding their fingers around his. And then Emma puts her other hand atop of all of the others and says, "You can do this."

And so she does.

* * *

She nearly staggers to her knees just seconds after Henry is pulled away from them, and rushed towards the emergency room. Her legs are fiercely trembling and her body is rather loudly and angrily reminding her that she hadn't had the energy to spare – certainly not enough for the repeated use of magic - but somehow or another, Regina manages to stay standing on her feet, a small almost victorious smile lifting her lips up just a little bit.

Because for once, she hadn't failed Henry.

But then Emma asks the question that makes her heart nearly crack in half beneath the weight of her guilt and fear, "What the hell was that brand?"

"What brand?" David asks as he and Snow rush in. They're both red-faced and shivering, and there are white flakes in their hair. Apparently, what had been soft snowfall before is quickly turning into a very cold blizzard.

"Someone burned a brand into Henry's shoulder," Emma notes. "They must have attacked him while I was on the phone with him."

"Jesus," David says, his hand over his mouth.

"Yeah," Emma says, her eyes still on Regina who is now staring down the hallway, towards the double doors that Henry had been taken through.

"Regina," Snow prompts, noticing both the way Emma is looking at Regina and the way Regina is staring away . "Do you know what the brand was?"

"I do."

"It wasn't the Home Office's symbol, right?" Emma queries with a frown. "At least it's not the one that they've been spray-painting all over town."

"No, not theirs," Regina agrees. "One of hers."

"Their…Queen had one of her own?" Snow asks, her eyes wide.

Regina's pained eyes flicker up towards the girl who had once been meant to be her daughter. "Not exactly. The one that you have been seeing all over Storybrooke is the one she created to symbolize her greatest creation – what we know of as the Home Office – but the one on Henry's back…" she takes a deep breath, and it catches hard in her throat, "…the one on my back is one she utilized in order to designate certain people as…dirty."

"Dirty?" David repeats, because such a concept is so foreign to him.

"Meaning what?" Emma demands, anger deepening her voice.

"She considered me impure because of what I am and who I've been."

"The Evil Queen?" Snow asks.

"Yes. To her, I was the very worst of things. I was an abomination of the natural order of things, and branding me was her way to show it."

"But Henry?"

"He's my son."

"Which means he must be dirty, too," Snow finishes. She puts up her hand to stop the immediate protest that is about to come from Emma's lips. "Of course I don't believe that. I don't think anyone sane does, but it's clear that we're not dealing with sane people, Emma, and I think that whatever vendetta they have against Regina, they mean to extend it to Henry, too."

"Then I need to leave," Regina says immediately, her eyes widening in panic. "If I leave –"

"If you leave town, they'll just find a way to force you back to Storybrooke," Emma tells her, shaking her head. "They didn't sit on their hands for seven years just to let you walk away now. No, whatever they need from you – magic or whatever - it has to go down inside of Storybrooke, and we're just kidding ourselves if we think they'll let you leave without a fight."

"I never wanted this," Regina says, meeting Emma's eyes. "You have to believe me. I just wanted to see Henry again. I just…I missed him. If I had known that this would…I'm so sorry." She looks so sad and desperate.

And so terribly broken.

Like all of her mismatched pieces – all of the ones that Emma and Snow and Henry and David have been trying so hard to put back together again over the last few weeks – are all just shattering and crumbling all over again.

"Regina," Emma says, her voice softening. "This isn't your fault."

"But we all know that it is," Regina snaps back, tears on her face, and then on the collar of her jacket. "If for just once in my life, I hadn't been selfish, if I had just left him alone to be the happy boy that I saw waiting tables in Boston, he wouldn't be in that room right now wearing the same horrible brand that I have on me. He doesn't deserve it like I do."

"No," Snow says defiantly, almost even angrily. And then she reaches forward and wraps her deceptively strong arms around Regina, surprising everyone in the room, but perhaps Regina the most. "You don't deserve it, either, and I am glad that you're home," Snow insists as she tightens the hold into a warm hug. "And we are going to stop these people. We are."

Regina lets out what sounds like a strangled whimper, and then she drops her head to Snow's shoulder for a moment and just allows the embrace, and allows herself the comfort that her former stepdaughter is offering her.

After a long moment of this, she straightens up, wipes her tears away, and steps out of Snow's arms and away. "I need air," she says and then quickly turns away and starts down the hallway, towards the doors leading outside.

Snow starts to protest, but David puts his hand in hers and shakes his head.

"Someone should keep an eye on her," Snow insists. "They're out there, and this was a warning to her. Or a threat. We need to keep her safe.""

"And we will," Emma assures her. "But today has really sucked for her, and I think what Regina could really use right now is a moment to herself."

"She's had the last seven years to herself," Snow reminds them with an almost urgent shake of her head. "She asked us to stay before. She doesn't want to be alone. Not anymore," She starts to move forward to follow after Regina, but again, David catches her and pulls her back to him.

"She's not alone," David says. "We're just giving her a moment to catch her breath. She doesn't want to be like this when we get to see Henry, Snow. We need to let her try to be strong for him, and this what _she_ needs."

Snow deflates. "All right. Fine. You're right."

"It's going to be okay," Emma promises. "Because we are done with these guys. We were all willing to forget what they did ten years ago, but maybe we shouldn't have been. They killed Neal and so many others, and they did God only really knows what to Regina. But whatever they want, it's over."

"What's your plan?" David asks.

"To go on the offensive," Emma replies, her tone as cold as ice. "They want a war, we'll give them one. And I think they're going to end up being very sorry that they woke up the magic within Regina all over again."

"Should we be as well?" David prompts.

"No," Emma says immediately. "Because it wasn't anger that helped her bring us all to the hospital a few minutes ago. It was something better than that. She's not the same person she was, but they may be surprised to learn that the person she is now is stronger than she thinks she is."

"Okay," Snow agrees, but then adds again, "But we still shouldn't leave her exposed to them, Emma. However strong her heart might be now, her body still isn't and I don't think that she could handle anymore from them."

"I know," Emma replies. She looks back towards the doors that Henry had been taken through. Logically, she knows that his wound is ugly but hardly life threatening. His unconsciousness had been caused by shock and pain as opposed to anything more serious, which means he's going to be just fine.

But he's still her son, and he'd been lying half-naked in the snow with a brand on his shoulder that had been put there in order to taint him as something dirty and impure and good God that just pisses her off.

She breathes in and then out. And then reminds herself that Henry is completely safe now. He's in Whale's capable if not necessarily good hands.

And that all of this – Henry even being out tonight – had happened because he'd wanted so desperately to protect the mother that he'd been without for ten years; he'd left the house because he'd been emotional and upset about what these sons of bitches had done to Regina. Which had left him vulnerable to them. Just as Regina – now in the same state – is.

"Text me the moment Whale comes out," Emma instructs.

"We will," Snow promises.

"And if you see anyone that you don't know –"

"They won't get past us," David assures her. "Trust me, they won't."

"I do," Emma says with a smile. One last look at the doors, and then she follows after Regina, out towards the bitter wind and the whirling snow.

* * *

She leaves the hospital and keeps on walking; she knows that they'd been expecting her to just step outside and take a breath or two, but suddenly her feet are moving and she finds herself standing in front of Gold's shop.

And then he's looking up at her through the window.

He beckons her to enter so, of course, she does.

"Gold," she says upon entrance.

"Regina," he addresses her, his eyebrow up. He looks exactly the same as he always has, frozen in time by the magic within the Dark One's blade.

"I need help," she says, her voice quiet and unsteady. She knows that she doesn't want to be here, but she thinks that she'll do anything for Henry.

Even descend into hell all over again.

But Rumple has changed as well, it would seem, because instead of jumping at the chance to destroy her soul all over again, he simply smiles at her and shakes his head. "What kind of help, dearie? Assistance with pain?"

His dark curious eyes flicker down towards her wounded leg and hip, and it's like the steel of his gaze causes every one of her nerves to suddenly spark at once because where as before there'd just been a familiar aching pain there, now she feels an actual burning agony, and her hand shoots out to grab a surface as she remembers that the cane she's been using is currently leaning against a wall in Henry's bedroom back at the townhouse.

She clenches her teeth to stop herself from crying out, but then he's touching her – his hands dry and cool – and she looks up at him curiously.

"Breathe, Regina," he says almost gently. "The pain is in your head."

"It's not," she growls back. "They did this to me."

"They did and the injuries are very real, I'm afraid, but what you're feeling at this moment is not," he assures her, his hand on her elbow. "Breathe and calm yourself, and then we can talk about what you really need from me."

So she does, and slowly but surely, the pain ebbs, and slides back to being a buzzing constant discomfort right beneath the edges of her awareness.

"We always become conscious of what hurts the most when someone else becomes aware of the same," Rumple says as he moves away from her.

She nods her head for a moment, still getting her balance again, and then she asks, her voice shaky, "Did you hear what they did to Henry tonight?"

"Belle did," he confirms, his expression grim. "And so yes, I did. I heard it was some kind of brand, but she wasn't clear on what it was exactly."

"It's this one," Regina says as she turns around and pulls both her jacket and the top of her sweater down so that she can see the ruined flesh of his back. She tries not to think about the whip marks that he can surely see or the other kinds of burns; she hopes that he's just looking at the mark and nothing else, but knows better. She feels his cool hands on her again, and knows that he's touching the warm skin around the brand he finds there.

"I've seen this before," he says, removing his hands from her, and indicating that she can now pull her sweater and jacket back up. If she didn't know better, she'd think that he almost looks a bit horrified at what he's just seen, but surely that can't be because even time couldn't have made him sp kind.

No, perhaps not time, she muses as she meets his eyes and sees what is absolutely some kind of strange compassion. Perhaps love, though.

"Where?" she asks as she turns to face him, readjusting her clothing.

"A girl from a very long time ago," Rumple replies. "One that I became aware of during my search for my son. Through no fault of her own, she had been touched by an evil far worse than either you or I could ever aspire to be, and it had changed her terribly. It seems it altered her into such evil."

"You know her name?" Regina asks, stepping towards him, an old familiar kind of excitement brewing in the middle of her chest. She has a feeling that a name hardly matters because unless this woman is from her home world – and Regina doesn't believe that she is – it won't make much of a difference.

But it'd sure as hell to know at least something about her tormentor.

"Of course," Rumple replies.

"Because you always did traffic in names," Regina finishes.

He nods his head. "Will it change anything? To know who she is?"

"No," Regina admits. "I will still have spent three years in a nightmare and seven years trying to heal myself, but at least when I see her again, I'll know what to call her." She shakes her head. "She called me by my name over and over, like she had some kind of power over me just by using it. She did."

"She did," Rumple agrees. "Her name is Wendy Darling."

Regina tilts her head. "Why is that familiar to me?"

"Because I presume you once read Henry the story of Peter Pan," Rumple replies. "But as we well know, Regina, all stories comes from some truth."

Regina blinks. "The little girl in the story –"

"Had her entire life destroyed by the use of magic," Rumple nods. "She lost first the brave boy who would protect her – my son – and then both of her brothers to Peter Pan, who I might add is not quite the happy little prankster that the movies of this world would have us believe him to be."

"He's the great evil you spoke of? A teenager?" Regina asks, unable to hide her disbelief that a child in a green leaf cap could be made of darkness.

"He may look like a child, but he's been alive far longer than even I have been," Rumple corrects. "And where I might traffic in names and deals, he traffics in souls and youth. He consumes the energy of those he brings to him, and discards them when they serve him no further purpose."

"And this girl? She survived him, yes? So what did he do to her?"

"Sometimes dead is better. She tried to follow her brothers to rescue them, but was turned away from Neverland with that mark that you now have on you on her. It was Pan's way of calling her too impure to be on Neverland with him and the other children. Apparently, she wasn't innocent enough."

"So she branded me as some kind of…transference?"

"I wouldn't waste time trying to understand the psychology of this woman," Rumple cautions. "My son found her after he returned from Neverland. She was in a psychiatric hospital." He tilts his head. "Though a good deal older than he was. She was in her seventies, and suffering from severe dementia."

"Then it can't be the same woman."

"He specifically mentioned the brand that she had. She showed it to him, and he recognized it as one Pan placed on those he rejected."

"I don't understand," Regina says with a shake of her head. "The woman who tortured me for three years wasn't older; she was in her thirties and she was cold and hard and cruel, but she wasn't suffering from dementia. She was very clear about what she was doing, and how much she enjoyed it."

"Magic changes everything," Rumple replies, his voice so solemn and dark and knowing. "Just because she's the one running the Home Office now doesn't mean that she was the one who originated it. Perhaps something changed inside of her mind when she saw Bae again or perhaps someone from whoever was running the Home Office first finally found her."

"Owen did say that he was found," Regina says to herself. "And that would have been before your son returned to this world. I think it's safe to say, though, that Wendy Darling overthrew whatever power structure had been in place. While I was their guest, she was the one running the show."

"Which means she's quite likely in possession of a lot of technology, power and knowledge. All which was used against you during your stay."

"I remember," Regina murmurs, for a moment losing herself in an awful and far too clear memory of the blonde woman standing over, reading to her from a book on the history of magic. She'd been getting angrier by the moment, her words sharper with each word that she'd spoken aloud.

And then when she'd finished, and when she'd slammed the book closed, she'd ordered in a furious voice that her captive be purified with fire.

Regina shivers and shoves the memory away, trying not to think about the burn marks on the soles of her feet or the ones on her inner thighs.

"So she's keeping herself artificially young?" she asks instead.

"Perhaps, though I wager she doesn't want your magic just for that."

"No, probably not," Regina allows with a tired sigh of resignation. She looks up at Rumple, then, "I need a favor from you, and in return, I will give you whatever it is that you want from me. I don't care what the price is."

His eyebrow lifts. "Clearly a big favor, then."

"Yes. The biggest."

"You know better than to offer me deals that you can't control."

"I don't care," she says. "Henry is the only thing that matters to me. I came back here because I wanted to see him and I endangered him, and now he's hurt because of that. I don't care what it costs me to fix that for him."

"You want me to remove his memory of what happened?"

"No," she says immediately. "I want you to remove her brand. It's still fresh and it hasn't settled into his skin yet, which means you can still heal him. He shouldn't have to wear that mark. He's not…he's not what I am."

"And what are you, Regina?"

"I don't know," she admits. "It keeps changing. Will you help me?"

"Yes," he says. "I'll visit the boy this afternoon, and remove it."

She sighs in relief. Then, "What do you want from me?"

Rumple leans towards her, and a sinister sneer overtakes his features, "I simply want your word that you will find the strength and power within yourself to stop the Home Office once and for all and that when you do, you will strike down Wendy Darling yourself. Or bring her to me to do it."

"Why?" she asks.

"Because what she did, for whatever her reasons, she was responsible for my son's death. They were looking for us even without Owen Flynn's vendetta against you; that woman who was his fiancée manipulated him on orders from her boss. The same woman who held you for three years."

"So this is vengeance for you. Haven't we all had enough of that?"

"No, this is about my son, Regina," Rumple says with a short sharp shake of his head. "You want me to help yours, and I will; all I ask in return is that you help mine get the justice that he so richly deserves. Do we have a deal?"

"We do."

"Very good." He looks her over then. "Now, about the matter that you actually came here for: you can feel your own magic inside of you again?"

"I can. But it comes and goes. It feels…unfamiliar."

"Like before? After the curse broke?"

"No, like when I first started learning."

"Interesting. And you want my help in making it stronger?"

"No, she doesn't," a sharp voice says from the entrance to the shop, and for the first time, they realize that the door has been open during the entire conversation. They both turn to see Emma standing there now, wet and cold looking and glaring at Gold like she wants to kick him somewhere improper.

"Miss Swan," he greets, and some things haven't changed because there's clearly still very little love lost between these two. "So good to see you."

"Can it. Regina, what are you doing here? I've been looking for you."

Regina's eyes widen in alarm. "Henry –"

"Is fine. I was worried about you with those Home Office goons around."

Regina exhales. "Oh. I'm…I'm fine." She seems a bit confused, like she's still trying to come to terms with the idea of anyone being worried about her.

"Which is good," Emma says. "Getting help from Gold with your magic, though, isn't. You don't need it. You took care of us without him earlier."

"I teleported us," Regina protests. "A lot of good that will do in an attack."

"You'll figure it out," Emma assures her. "We will. But you didn't go through what you did, and you didn't come home to end up back where you were."

"Far be it from me to ever agree with Miss Swan," Rumple says, his voice sounding almost deceptively lazy, "But she's right. And I would wager that if the Home Office does want you here to get at your magic – which is what I would suspect is what they're after – then what they want is the darkest that you have within you because that truly is the most powerful and potent of all actionable magic. It would be quite a shame to hand it over so easily."

"I just want to be able to defend him," Regina offers up weakly.

"And we will, but not with you becoming her again," Emma insists.

Regina considers the sheriff's words for a moment, turning over the last ten years – what she can remember of it – in her mind. Ever since waking up in the hospital, she's been trying to rebuild herself into something better than she was. Part of that has been facing the sins of her past, and part has been about trying to make better choices. Ones that don't end in pain and hurt.

She still wonders about the one to seek out Henry, but that choice has been made and there's no way to turn back that clock. This one, though, the choice of whether to let the darkness back inside, well that one is still hers.

As a young girl, it'd never really been a choice, because her life had all been just a well played out manipulation, but this is so different now because Emma is watching her with eyes that speak of faith and hope and a hundred other things that Regina feels like she doesn't deserve and never will.

Like the one that seems to be saying that Emma believes in her.

Believes that she'll make the right decision for herself and for Henry.

So she sighs and does just that, her shoulders sagging.

And Emma lets out a breath of relief and says, "We should be getting back; my mom just texted me to tell me that Whale came out and –"

"You let Victor next to our son?"

"Yeah, why?"

Regina swallows hard. "I…I don't want him around Henry."

"He's a terrible human being who I'd happily see locked away in a dark basement somewhere, but he's also the best doctor in this town."

"Maybe he is," Regina says. "But I want him away from Henry. Please."

"Okay. We can do that, but in order to, we need to get back." Her voice is gentle, almost soothing, and Regina knows she's being handled, but she allows it because there's a strange kind of familiarity to it; Emma has always been good at talking her down from high ledges and keeping her calm.

Now is apparently no different.

"Gold," Regina says. "Another favor? This one without payment preferably."

"I presume that you want transport."

"Yes. You have a promise to keep, and I'm…"

"All out of magic, yes, of course."

"Wait, what promise?" Emma demands, her narrowing suspiciously.

"Henry isn't wearing that mark," Regina states, and then she looks directly at Emma and dares her to contest her words. Her eyes are blazing, and it's the strongest that Regina has looked since she returned to Storybrooke.

So Emma simply nods her head because this isn't a fight worth having.

And to be honest, it's not like she wants her son wearing the brand, either.

"Hang on," Emma says just before Rumple snaps his fingers. "Since you seem to know what's happening here, why did they attack Henry?"

"To get Regina to find her magic," Rumple says, sounding like he thinks she's a complete idiot. "And that's exactly what happened. They confirmed that she has it, and still has the ability to access it with extreme emotion."

"So their attack was a success," Regina says dully.

"Your boy is alive," Rumple replies, and there's a sadness in both his voice and eyes that makes Emma look away, her heart suddenly aching. "So no matter what they did, they failed to actually hurt you where your heart lives and if you stop them, then you will continue to make then do just that."

"Regina," Emma says, reaching out to lightly take the former queen's hand in hers. "Let's get back to Henry. We can't protect him from here."

"All right," Regina answers. "Send us to him."

Gold inclines his head and then snaps his fingers, dark blue smoke curling around the two women for a brief moment before they disappear.

He watches the spot where they've disappeared from for a long moment, thinking about a boy that he'll never see again, and the many ways that life seems to destroy the people who deserve it the very least.

* * *

His bleary green eyes open when he hears the sound of his mothers entering his room and then sitting down next to him. He tries to smile, but he's too doped up and in too much pain to really make it work. "Ruby?" he asks, slurring his words. "Is she okay? Tell me they didn't hurt her."

"What?" Regina queries. "What is he talking about?"

"Ruby was in the park with him a few minutes before the attack."

"And she didn't smell or hear anything?"

"She's not the same person that you remember," Emma says cryptically. Then, to Henry, "Ruby is fine, kid; she's out in the waiting room with your grandparents. She wanted me to tell you that you're an idiot."

"Yeah, I am," he says with a goofy grin.

"But she's worried sick about you, kid. We all are."

"But I'm okay."

"You're going to be better than that," Regina promises him, her eyes on the white bandage wrapped around his back and chest. "I promise you that."

He nods his head slowly, and then rolls it towards Regina. "I'm sorry," he says, his voice cracking slightly. "I just wanted to protect you and I didn't know how to do that. I shouldn't have looked at the files. I didn't want to see them. I don't want to know that someone hurt you like that."

"Oh, my sweet little prince," she says, and suddenly she feels the sharp pain again, screeching like fire through her leg and hip. Thankfully, Emma sees the falter, and immediately moves a chair under her and urges her into it. "I'm okay," Regina tells him. "As long as you are, I will always be okay."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

He looks up at her and then over at Emma. "Promise me I won't lose either of you to this. Promise me that we're all going to be okay, and that no one is going to take our family away from us again." His eyes suddenly seem so clear and focused and it's the pain and fear causing this, but it's real.

He needs this.

His mothers exchange a look, and then each of them take one of his hands.

And they squeeze tight. They don't say the words he's asked them to say, but he find he doesn't need them to because they're both with him now, and they're holding on to him and he to them and this is how it should be.

"Stay," he whispers as his eyelids droop down low, the darkness of drugs and pain slipping towards him and then overwhelming him.

And though he never hears their answer, he knows without a doubt that they will both be next to him when he wakes up.

They are.

**TBC…**


	12. 11

**A/N: **Apologies for the long wait between chapters. Hoping to have another up this week.

**Warnings:** Some language, some non-specific talk of torture.

_Enjoy!_

* * *

**STORYBROOKE, MAINE - JANUARY, 2023**

"How are you?" Emma asks, her voice soft and the lines around her eyes (Regina wonders when she had gotten those) creasing with worry as she gazes across at the older woman who is sitting entirely too straight in an uncomfortable hospital chair. The posture is so rigid and Emma just knows that it has to be hurting Regina's already injured hip and leg.

"I'm fine," Regina responds, her tone meant to be sharp but failing on account of the fact that both she and Emma are sitting over their sleeping son's body, watching him fitfully slumber after a brutal attack on him by the very same sons of bitches that had held her captive for over three years.

She means to be cold and to push the concern away, but there's a slight tremor clearly audible, and she's damned tired and worn down right now.

"Fine," Emma repeats, looking down at Henry. The bandages are still there, but they won't need to be for much longer; Gold will be stopping by soon enough to heal the injury and then there will be nothing left on the flesh.

Then, all of the wounds will all be inside of Henry's head.

A glance across at a still agitated Regina – a look at how the older woman is anxiously rubbing at the scars on her palm – and Emma knows that Henry got off easy. Not that it feels like that right now, but oh God it could have been so much worse than this. The Home Office could have hurt him badly enough where even Gold and his magic couldn't heal him.

They could have killed him.

But they didn't.

Because they'd wanted him to give a message to his mother.

The Home Office – or more precisely, their Queen who in a strange twist of lunacy is the once innocent but now deeply twisted girl from _Peter Pan _(that's a whole other weird story Emma doesn't want to think about at the moment) – apparently wants Regina of old to come out and play with them.

They want her to unleash the magic that is suddenly surging within her again and they want her to face them. The worst part is, Emma has a feeling that they'll continue pushing at Regina – that they'll keep threatening everything she holds dear - until she does exactly that. The question, of course, is why a group dedicated to destroying magic is so eager to shove a person who just days earlier had been unable to feel that kind of power and energy within her to return to using it. What is their ultimate endgame?

"I'm not fine," Regina admits after a moment, her voice quiet and still shaking. "I'm…I'm scared." She smiles ever so slightly – humorlessly, really – when she says this because she knows how odd it must sound to Emma.

After all, the Evil Queen is afraid of nothing.

But the problem is, she's not really that woman anymore no matter how much people might want her to be, and she's terrified that if the Evil Queen is, indeed, the person that the Home Office desperately wants to bring out, then a whole lot more blood could be spilled before this is all over.

Blood that will be on her hands, heart and soul.

She doesn't want that any more. She's not sure that she ever really did.

What she wants now, is just to have peace and family.

But then her eyes slip down to the bandage, and she feels a flicker of something dark deep within her, and she knows that she's not going to be allowed to have either of those things until she wins or loses this war.

"Yeah," Emma agrees. "Me, too."

"You probably hate me right about now," Regina murmurs with a self-depreciating chuckle. "I come back into your life two weeks, and suddenly everything goes upside down. Suddenly, Henry is in danger all over again."

"Well, I'm not overly pleased," Emma admits. "But I'm also not angry at you. Two things I've figured out: one – they've been waiting on you for seven years, and maybe they could have waited forever, but chances are that they would have eventually found a way to force you back to Storybrooke."

"And two?"

"And two, Henry loves you, and he's been missing a part of himself since you were taken from him. No, I'm not happy that my – _our_ – son has been hurt, but well, his happiness means more to me than anything else. And you know what? I can't believe I'm saying this considering how much both of us would have done just about anything to get rid of one another ten years ago, but I'm actually enjoying having you around, Regina. Even if you are a stubborn bullheaded pain in the ass who still refuses to let anyone in."

"I _have_ let you in," Regina insists. "You know almost everything that I know about what I went through in that…place."

"I doubt that," Emma says, and their eyes meet – green on brown – in a way that suggests that the sheriff understands how many things Regina will never be able to find the words to explain. How many dark secrets need to stay buried down deep because speaking of them can only bring on pain.

"You know enough."

"And I'm okay with that, because I do understand why you don't want to talk about some things. I'm not sure that I'd want to, either, and I won't push you anymore than I have - I promise you that - but I do hope that I'm helping," Emma says, tilting her head in curiosity. "I am trying to."

"Because you're a fool," Regina replies, her words gentle enough to remove the possible sting of them. "A fool who tries to be a good person to someone who doesn't deserve it even when she shouldn't."

"Yeah, well, that's me, I guess."

"Indeed. And you are. Helping. I have felt better in the last two weeks – at least physically – than I have since I was kidnapped." She shrugs. "That's probably not saying much because everything still hurts, but it's still better."

"So, progress?"

"I suppose."

"You said physically," Emma notes.

"A lot has happened," is all Regina will allow before her eyes slide back to Henry again, and then her hands darts out to move hair from his forehead. His skin is warm and slightly damp, but he seems comfortable enough when one considers the rather intense trauma that he'd gone through tonight.

"It has," the sheriff allows.

"I didn't come back here to deal with the past," Regina continues.

"Didn't you? That's why you sent my mother that letter."

"Allow me to correct, then. I didn't return here to deal with what the Home Office did to _me_; I came back because I was tired of being lonely and I…"

She shakes her head and laugh, the sound hollow and sad.

"You what?" Emma prompts.

"I need to make amends."

"For the Evil Queen."

"Yes." Regina frowns, then. "Why didn't your mother have another child?"

Emma's eyebrow leaps into her hairline as if indicate her surprise at the seemingly abrupt change in subject. "Excuse me?"

"Ten years have passed, and yet you don't have a sibling. Considering how large a family your mother always wanted, that makes no sense to me."

"They tried," Emma answers sadly. She glances across at the far wall as if she's trying to figure out how best to phrase this. For a moment, as Regina watches the sheriff struggling to find a tactful way to tell the truth, she finds herself missing the brass impulsive woman who would have just blurted it out no matter how inconvenient or painful it might have been.

But she doesn't need that now, anyway.

Because the truth is painted all over Emma's face.

"The curse caused irreparable damage to her, didn't it?" Regina suggests.

"Yeah," Emma admits with a tired sounding sigh. "After the Home Office was defeated and the barrier was put up, everyone started talking about the future, and what kind of headcount would be needed to maintain upcoming generations." She shakes her head at this like she finds it absurd that she had even been part of a conversation like this. With a laugh, she continues with, "What we discovered was that a small amount of the folks in town were affected by some kind of strange after-effect of the curse; something that quite literally made it so their biological clocks failed to start up again. Which meant no aging, but also no reproductive capabilities."

"Your mother looks older. So does your father."

"Whale found a way to get everything moving again," Emma explains, her green eyes narrowing at the way Regina seems to flinch back and away from his name. "It involved a lot of science and some magic, and it worked. Kind of. Those who had been afflicted started aging like they were supposed to, but parts of them didn't start back up again. My mother was..."

"Barren," Regina says dully, thinking of the uncomfortable irony of how she now shares yet another kind of horrible fate with her once mortal enemy.

"Yeah."

"What about your father?"

Emma shakes her head. "Eventually, we realized what the connection was. Everyone who had been in my parent's castle on the night that I was born, the night that you stormed it got hit by whatever this secondary thing was."

"And I'm guessing adoption isn't much of an option here?"

"Not really, no."

"I didn't know," Regina insists. "It wasn't a clause that I built into a curse."

"Gold told us. He said that it was an unintended consequence, and that dark magic tends to have such things baked into it, which often goes completely unnoticed by the caster. You know, he actually seemed amused by you not knowing. Which got him a broken nose from my father. Bad timing."

Regina groans.

"What?"

"He may be useful, but he's still a son of a bitch."

Emma chuckles. "Yeah, he is. And I meant what I said before: you don't need whatever revenge or anger that he might be able to give you."

"Perhaps not," Regina agrees, once again reaching out to stroke Henry's hair, her fingers weaving into his dark locks. "But if they come near Henry again, I may stop caring what I need, and stop worrying about who I'm trying to be. They touch him again, and I will destroy all of them."

"They touch him again, and I'll be there with you," Emma says. "But they're not going to; we're not going to let them."

"Oh? And how do you propose that we stop an enemy that I just today finally identified? I'm all for taking this fight to them, Emma. I'm all for pushing them out of Storybrooke once more, but my dear, we both know that they're not going to make it easy to do. They want something from me – my magic, my heart, I don't really know – and they won't stop until they have a chance to get it. I imagine they won't come until then, either."

"Probably not, but there is another way to get information."

"There is?"

"There is, and once Henry is back home safe and in his bed, and all healed up, I'll show you," Emma tells her, a dark shadow passing over her face.

"You have my curiosity."

"Hold onto that because I don't think that's what you'll be feeling the most of when I show you who we have down below."

"Down below? The hospital? Inside the sanitarium?

Emma nods her head slowly, a dark shadow falling across her face.

"You have a prisoner."

"We do, and I'll bring you to him later. He likes to talk, but so far he hasn't said much that's useful. Maybe we haven't been asking the right questions."

"Well –" she's cut off by the sound of the door opening, and then whatever words she'd been about to speak just slip away as she sees Victor enter.

He smiles at her, and her skin crawls. "How's our patient doing?" he asks, appearing to be oblivious to their prior conversation, but for some reason or another, neither woman quite buys it completely. They also don't think too terribly much if it, though, because people around here are overly nosey.

It's an Enchanted Forest thing, apparently.

"He's sleeping," Emma replies, her eyes on Regina. She can see the way that the older woman has stiffened up, reacting uncomfortably to him.

"Good. And Regina? How are you?"

She blinks and gazes right at him, clearly surprised. "What?"

"You passed out yesterday. And from what I understand, you used magic for the first time in a long while today. After what you've been through –"

"You have no idea what I've been through," Regina snaps. Her eyes dart towards Emma as if to confirm this, as if to verify that Emma hasn't passed on anything to Victor about the nightmare that she'd gone through.

Emma offers her a small smile of confirmation. As if to say she'd never.

"You're right," Victors allows, but there's a strange lilt to his voice. He's always been someone that has rung a bit false to Emma, but her lie detector is pinging like crazy, and though even she admits that it's prone to false reads, that usually doesn't happen when she's not even trying to use it.

And she hadn't been.

But he _is_ lying about something. Or at least, he's playing coy.

She wonders if he'd gotten ahold of Regina's files all on his own.

Is that even possible?

"But I do know that magic can be rough on a system that isn't used to it," Whale continues, his tone genial like they're all just good friends having an easy chat. "And again, last night I was called over because you collapsed."

"I'm…I'm fine."

"She is," Emma confirms, moving to her feet. "And you should go."

"Emma," Regina says softly. "Not here." Her eyes flicker down to Henry.

"I mean no harm," Victor insists, his hands up as if in surrender.

"That's what you said to Ruby, too," Emma snaps back.

His eyes harden. "You could never understand what happened there."

"I don't need to. I just need to know I want you away from my son."

"Is that what you want as well, Regina?"

"Yes," the former queen answers immediately.

"All right. But what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Regina, whatever bad blood or history there is or isn't between us, you know that I'm good at what I do. I saw the way you were limping, and I know something is wrong. If you let me, I might be able to help you."

"You've helped enough," she says, and then she frowns because she really doesn't know what she means by that. Perhaps she's speaking of his deception from decades earlier or maybe she means the mob that he had once led to her door. Either way, she feels a cold certainty within her, an absolute need to keep this man as far away from her as is humanly possible.

"Of course," he says, and then he reaches out and touches her shoulder.

She freezes, and her eyes go wide with horror and for a moment, she's back on that metal table and there's so much pain and she can hear someone screaming and she knows that she's the one doing it but she can't seem to stop herself. Everything hurts, and she's bleeding so much and there are voices above her. Familiar and unsettling and one says softly, "I think we should stop for tonight; I don't think her heart can take much more of this."

She looks up at Victor, the white walls of the hospital room around them blurring, and though Emma and Henry are right nearby, all she sees is the doctor looking down at her with a knowing smirk on his lips as his fingers dig hard into her skin of her shoulder and his cold eyes stare into her soul.

Like he _does_ know everything that she's been through.

Like he knows how broken she is.

Like he was there for it.

She opens her mouth to say something, and she almost even does, but then the sensible part of her brain catches up to irrational part, and she stops herself from speaking because this wild insane thing that she's thinking – that Victor had worked with the Home Office – well it's impossible. He couldn't have been in that warehouse and in that horrible room with her; Emma said no one has left town besides she and Henry for almost ten years.

Regina blinks and he's not smirking at her.

She blinks again, and Emma is pushing him away, and it's her hand on Regina's shoulder instead. Gentle and supportive.

"Whale," she growls, trying to ignore for just a moment how pale and shaky Regina is. How much it seems like she's trapped somewhere else entirely.

"Well, Regina, I see that you have the Savior protecting you again," the doctor says with a low chuckle, and there's something vaguely cruel and angry about the way he says this. "But you don't need it with me."

"Go," Emma tells him. "And have your nurse come back so we can start getting our paperwork done. We're checking Henry out of here tonight."

"I wouldn't recommend that," he protests, almost whining.

"We're leaving," Regina says suddenly, softly. She looks up at him. "And, Victor, you are not to come near me ever again. If you do, I'll kill you."

There's a moment where something strange goes through his eyes, and then he sneers. "Same crazy Queen," he mutters, and then turns and leaves.

"Okay, what the hell just happened?" Emma demands, stepping back and away from Regina so as to give her some much needed breathing room.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been super weird about him ever since you got back here, and then he touches you and it's like you're somewhere else entirely. Where?"

"There," Regina replies. She doesn't need to specify more than that because by now, they both know exactly what the dark place in her mind is.

"Because of Whale?"

"I suppose he reminded me of the Home Office's doctors," Regina provides. "He was always very cold about how he did things. I actually did him a small favor when I brought him over here and gave him something of a bedside manner and a soul. The real Victor is a cold bastard – an actual sociopath."

"I know," Emma tells her. "We found that out the hard way."

"Because of whatever he did to Ruby?"

"Yeah," Emma answers.

"Which you won't tell me about."

"No, I can't do that to her, but I think she would tell you if you really want to know what happened. You might not want to, though; it's bad."

Regina looks down at Henry. "She means something to him."

"They've become friends over the years. He was there for her after what happened with Whale. And after Granny died."

"Will knowing what Victor did to her help me to be there for _him_?" Regina asks, looking up at Emma with so much confusion in her eyes. It's a bit strange, really, because years ago, Regina never would have doubted her parenting instincts. Even when she'd been screwing things up by holding on too tight to her son, she'd still believed that she'd known what was best.

Now, she's the one asking for help.

"I think being next to him when he wakes up is all he cares about right now," Emma tells him. "Talking to Ruby might help _you_ because she might be the one person in this town who actually understands what you went through, but what Henry needs from you? Just you, Regina. That's it."

"I hope you're right," Regina says. "Because every part of me wants to run."

"That's my gig, not yours."

"They're after me, not you."

"They'll come after him again, and we both know it."

"We do."

"So we fight these sons of bitches off together," Emma tells her. "Because he's our son, and no one is hurting him again, and you know what? I've kind of enjoyed the last few years of relative quiet. I'd like to get back to it."

"I never should have returned."

"But you did, and it's time you stop seeing that as a bad thing."

"I don't understand you."

"You never have."

"You hated me before," Regina reminds her.

"No, you pissed me off before," Emma corrects. "That's not the same thing as hate. You frustrated the hell out of me, Regina, because I knew that you could be happier if you'd just allow it, but you just kept making choices that I couldn't understand because they always seemed to hurt you most of all."

"They did."

"I guess maybe now I'm hoping we can all make better choices."

"We? And what bad choices did you make?"

"I should have trusted my gut when your mother framed you."

"Water under the bridge," Regina replies with a wave of her hand. "I forgot about that a very long time ago, dear."

"I didn't."

"You should have," Regina tells her. "Because even if that attempt had failed, my mother would have kept coming for me until she got me. I wasn't strong enough to resist her temptations or her promises." She shakes her head in disgust at just the memory of this "You know what the funny thing is? The Home Office kidnapped me, tortured me and damaged my mind to the point where remembering the past is almost always painful, but in doing so, they also gave me clarity where there was none before. I saw the truth about my mother and what she'd done to me. About how easily I'd let her."

"Regina –"

"It's all right," the former queen soothes. "Most of those memories are lost to me, too. I recall what happened in Storybrooke with her, and there are bits and pieces from my life with her back in the Enchanted Forest, but so much about my time with my mother is gone now."

"Gone or –"

"In the shadows. Where I'd prefer they remain forever."

"Including Daniel?"

"No such mercy," Regina admits.

"Right. Well, I'm still sorry."

"And I'm sorry I didn't realize that none of this ever needed to happen. I have deep remorse for what I've done and who I am. I will always have that remorse, and there will never be penance enough for me, but I admit that I don't regret it as much I know that I should because all of my actions – good or evil or somewhere in between - they gave me Henry. I do regret that I didn't see you for the ally that you could have always been to me."

"I wanted to take my son back," Emma admits with a sheepish half-smile, something that looks a bit like disgust. "I didn't even realize it at the time - I certainly wouldn't have been able to admit it to myself if I had - but the reason I chose to stay in Storybrooke wasn't because I believed what Henry was telling me about the curse or my birthright and it wasn't because I didn't believe that you loved him; it was because I had my own regrets and I let them distort everything. If our places had been reversed, Regina, I wouldn't have seen me for the ally that I was, either. Because I wasn't one."

They stare at each other for a long moment, the honest truth finally hanging between them like a breath of cold fresh air. Finally, Regina nods her head in understanding of this new alliance and says, "I need your help to do this."

"You have it," Emma promises her.

"Well, this is lovely moment," a low voice rumbles from the doorway. They both look up to see Gold standing there, an eyebrow lifted as he watches them. "Two mothers coming together to protect their boy once again."

"Jesus, is it fuckwad day at the hospital?" Emma growls out.

"He's here to help Henry," Regina reminds her. Then, "You are, right?"

"Of course. As promised." He steps into the room and approaches Henry's bed. "But it is ever so lovely, Miss Swan, to hear your colorful vocabulary."

"Whatever. Heal him."

"Certainly. I'll need the bandages removed."

The two women exchange a look and then both of them step towards Henry. There's another moment of uncomfortable uncertainty as they try to figure out who will do what, but then Regina leans down and starts removing the bandages from around Henry's chest. Once they're free of him, she hands them to Emma who tosses them into the nearby garbage.

It's as in-sync as these two difficult different women can get, and it works.

Once the bandages are gone, and Henry's back is visible, Regina finds herself having to gulp in air because suddenly the vivid red and black burn mark is there to see, and just the memory of her own horrifically painful branding, and the reality that they'd done it to her son as well is enough to make her stomach suddenly flip over and her knees almost give out.

But she has to be strong for him so she simply turns her head away.

"Do it, Gold," Emma says softly, not looking at Regina, but at Henry instead.

She thinks about the color pictures that Henry had seen earlier that day, and wonders if any of Regina's wounds had looked like this one. She knows for a fact that Regina has a brand of her own, and she imagines that when it had been fresh and new, it'd probably been as horrifying as the one on Henry is at this moment. Now, years after receiving it, it's likely just an ugly scar that will forever torment the former queen, and remind her of the past.

Thankfully, Henry will never have to worry about that.

"Regina," she says. "He's going to be okay. Look."

Maybe it's this new trust that has suddenly developed between them – stronger tonight than it has been even though the last two weeks have given them abundant opportunity to bond and grow closer – or maybe it's Regina's own need to see Henry healed, but whatever it is, she turns around and watches with wide eyes as Gold waves his hand over Henry's shoulder and then does it again and again until the brand is completely gone.

Until he's fully healed.

And then she allows herself to breathe slower. Like she's okay again.

Like she remembers how to.

"Don't forget our deal," Gold says quietly.

Her eyes flicker to Emma. And then she nods her head.

"I won't," she promises him.

Because perhaps Wendy Darling's inevitable downfall – and likely death if the past is any guide to the present - doesn't have to be by her hand.

Or maybe it does.

But for now, she can pretend that she doesn't have to be the one who will end up with more blood staining her hands. For now, she can allow herself to believe that they can find a way to end this without any more pain.

She knows better.

It's nice to pretend.

* * *

It's well past midnight when they finally get back to the townhouse, and David is the one who helps her onto the couch after they've deposited Henry into his bedroom. Her hip is screaming, her leg is burning and her head is pounding. She knows that she'll be lucky if she's able to stand up straight come morning, and though she's humiliated to have to admit her physical weakness, she doesn't bother to deny it, either.

Because David doesn't say a word to her when he lowers her down.

He just smiles and then steps away, back towards Snow.

"I know that you would much rather be upstairs with him," Emma says as she comes over with a tall glass of water and a painkiller. "But the kid kicks like an ox in his sleep and neither one of us really needs that right now."

"I can handle it. I want to be there when he wakes up."

"And you will be," Emma assures her. "As soon as he starts coming to, I'll wake you up, and we'll both be there. But for now, he needs sleep. In the morning, he's going to have questions about what happened, and why he doesn't have the brand, and I think we need to be as honest as we can."

Regina swallows hard.

"He already knows everything," Emma reminds her.

"He knows what was in the file," Regina counters. "That's as honest as I'm wiling to be. Everything else, I can't."

Regina pretends not to notice the look of horror on Snow's face.

The one that says that it hadn't occurred to her that there could be worse things.

"That's good enough," Emma assures her. "Besides, I wasn't saying we needed to talk about the file or what happened to you. I was thinking more about why they're after you now, and why what happened to him did."

"Is that better? For him to know that he was hurt because of me?"

"He's more likely to be pissed on your behalf than mad at you."

"She's right," Snow says with a smile as she thinks endearingly of her grandson. "He doesn't like the people he loves being hurt, Regina. Your son is brave and he's strong and he wants to protect those he cares about."

"So much like you," Regina says, looking at Emma. "A fool rushing into battles that they don't understand because they're too stupid not to."

"If it makes you feel better, he's a snarky asshole like you."

"So, you mean he has my fantastic wit?"

"Sure. That," Emma replies with a smile.

"All right, then we'll be honest with him."

"Good. Now take your pill and sleep. Tomorrow is going to suck."

"You really do have a terrible vocabulary," Regina comments.

"Gold said colorful, not terrible," Emma reminds her. "And thank you."

Regina rolls her eyes, and then knocks the pill back with the water. It'll hit her quickly, and then everything will just fade away to static, but for now, she allows herself the calm of knowing that everyone she cares about is safe in this house and though there may be pain to come, for now, there's calm.

"We can stay," David says to Emma, for at least the fifth time since leaving the hospital with Henry sound asleep in the backseat of Ruby's Cadillac.

"I know," Emma replies. "Or you can go home and get a good night's sleep and be ready to deal with whatever we have to deal with in the morning."

"She's right," Snow tells her husband. "But if something happens –"

"You'll be the first to know."

"Okay," She steps towards Regina, then, and for a second, their eyes meet like they both want to say something to each other. Snow's hand moves forward, and it almost looks like she might take Regina's – it's not like they haven't touched each other since Regina's return – but then she pulls back because this moment feels wrong for this kind of emotion. It feels like even though they've come so very far, they haven't come far enough for this.

Not yet.

So Snow simply smiles, tucks her hands into her pockets to keep them from rebelling on her, says goodnight to her former stepmother, and then moves to leave. She's only slightly surprised when Emma follows them outside.

"I have a favor to ask," she says, her voice quiet and conspiratorial.

"Anything," David replies.

"I need to know where Whale was ten years ago. The night Neal died and Regina was kidnapped."

Snow tilts her head, as if remembering something from very long ago. "He wasn't at the hospital when we got there. He was…hard to find, right?"

"He was," David confirms, frowning. "When he did show up later, he said that he'd been sleeping, and hadn't heard his phone ringing, but we knew that he hadn't been at his own house because we'd looked for him there."

"No one asked any more questions than that," Emma reminds them. "We all had bigger concerns once Greg and Tamara tried to take everyone down. But maybe we should have asked more. Maybe we should have looked at him closer."

"Why?" Snow prompts. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that Regina freaks out anytime he comes near her. I'm thinking that he touched her tonight and she just about panicked. I'm thinking that there was an inside man who helped them, and we never did find out who it was."

"You're sure this isn't just about Ruby?" David asks. He looks over at Snow and sees her look – she's wanted Whale to pay for what he did for a very long time – and puts his hands up. "I just want to be clear about this."

"I honestly don't know if this is or isn't about Ruby, but I am sure that Whale knows more about Regina than he should," Emma states. "And whether that's because he knows the same way I do or because he has actual personal experience with what she went through, I don't know, but I do think we should find out because if he is involved in this, then he could have been the one to hurt Henry tonight. Or at least he knows who did it."

"Okay," David nods. "I'll ask around."

"Thank you," Emma replies. "And for what it's worth, I hope I'm wrong on this."

"Me, too," Snow confirms.

"One more thing," Emma says. "I'm taking her to see Greg tomorrow."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Snow asks, thinking about an angry man who has been held away from everyone - thought dead and buried - for almost ten years.

"We've been asking questions, and he's been stonewalling us for ten years," Emma answers with a look of grim determination. "Maybe seeing Regina again will get him talking. Maybe even get him to tell us the truth for once."

"But it could also hurt her."

"I know, and before we go in, I'll make sure she understands who it is that she's about to see. If she doesn't want to do it, we won't, and if she reacts badly to seeing him or whatever he says to her, we'll leave immediately."

"You're sure about this?" Snow asks, echoing her husband's previous question.

"No, but I think that we need to understand what we're dealing with."

"Do you want us there?" David asks.

"Maybe. I'll let you know."

"Okay," he leans in and kisses her on the cheek. "Just call."

She smiles, squeezes Snow's hand, and then steps back inside.

"What was all that about?" Regina drawls, her head lolled against the couch.

"I was telling them about our plans to go visit an old friend tomorrow," Emma replies. It's a bit of a half-truth, but she's not about to tell Regina about her suspicions of Whale. Not yet, at least; Regina is already anxious enough about the man, and until she's certain, Emma just won't do that to her.

"You'll tell me more in the morning?" Regina asks. "When I can remember?"

"I will," Emma assures her, her eyes tracking the glaze that's settling deep within Regina's own. "Would you like me to stay around for awhile? Until you fall asleep, at least?"

"Why? Did you want to talk, dear?" Regina asks, her eyebrow lifting up lazily. It's probably supposed to be haughty, but these painkillers have always moved mercifully quickly through her system, and she can already feel herself drifting out and away. Things hurt less, and she feels less.

That also means she understands less.

But she understands that Emma is trying to be there for her.

Trying to be a rock in case she needs it.

"Only if you want to," Emma replies, shifting around anxiously.

"For a minute," Regina admits, realizing that no, she doesn't really want to be alone just yet. In a moment or two, the world will slip away, and she won't care who is sitting beside her, but for now, she craves company.

Even if she's had it all night.

It's a bit like someone who has been in prison for a very long time suddenly wanting to gorge themselves on everything that feels like living again.

No, it's exactly like that.

"But only if you promise that you will wake me up when Henry wakes up; I want to be there."

"I said I would and I will," Emma confirms. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"I didn't want to, but since you're asking, why don't you have a lover?"

"All right, wasn't expecting that." She shrugs. "I've had relationships on and off, but Henry always came first, and well, I'm the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. There are surprisingly less suitors than you'd think."

"I don't believe that."

"It's the truth, sad to say."

"But it shouldn't be; being alone is awful."

"I'm not alone," Emma tells her, a bit of defiant defensiveness in her tone. "I have my parents, and I have friends, and Henry comes home from school whenever he can."

"It's not the same."

"Maybe not, but I'm not an easy person to love."

"And I thought you were the one with a lie detector."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Emma asks. She's standing above Regina currently, her hands settled on her hips, looking down at a sleepy and now heavily drugged woman who seems to be seconds away from passing out.

"It means you're very easy to love, dear; you're a hero with a stupid heart."

"Stupid heart," Emma muses. "So the painkillers are working."

"You should open it up and allow yourself to be loved."

"I have everything I need right here."

"Until you don't," Regina murmurs, her eyes slipping closed, and her body sliding down against the couch into an undignified half-slump. "And then you're just lonely and broken, and it's no one's fault but your own."

Emma's about to reply – though she's not entirely sure she knows how to respond to something that is so clearly self-referencing – but she stops when she sees the way Regina's breathing has slowed; she's sleeping now.

"You ridiculously stubborn woman," she mutters. She picks up a blanket and settles it gently over Regina's heavily slumbering body, tucking it lightly around her waist (not too high up or tight because she doesn't want Regina to feel trapped by it should she awaken in a confused and disorientated half-drugged state sometime in the night)."I'll see you in the morning, Regina," she says with a bit of a wry chuckle. "And the morning after that. And the morning after that."

She gets no reply.

But that's okay.

Because come morning, she'll be here. And so will Regina.

And then yeah, together, they're going to bring down Wendy Darling, the Home Office and whomever their inside man is once and for all.

**TBC…**


End file.
